Welcome

Welcome to issue 274 (125) — Gut Health.

In this body maintenance series, I have been exploring how we can keep our bodies fit and healthy so we can enjoy a long, happy and healthy retirement.

In this newsletter, I’m looking at something that isn’t directly our bodies but which can significantly impact our health: the bacteria that live in our guts.

Please note: I am not a medical professional, and the following is not medical advice; it’s based on what I have read on the subject over the years. My background is a PhD in biochemistry with experience in biomedical research and teaching.

Your Gut – Looking After the Hidden Ecosystem

Certain parts of the human body receive a great deal of attention as we get older. We worry about our hearts, our blood pressure, our joints, and whether our knees will cooperate when we get out of a chair.

Our intestines rarely receive quite the same attention. Unless, of course, they’re misbehaving.

Yet tucked away inside our guts is an extraordinary community of trillions of microorganisms. Collectively, they’re known as the gut microbiome, and over the past couple of decades, it’s become clear that these microorganisms do more than hang around waiting for lunch. In fact, thinking has shifted dramatically. We have gone from “all bacteria are bad” to “some bacteria are our friends”.

In fact, the bacteria in our guts help us digest parts of our food, produce useful substances, interact with our immune system and appear to influence aspects of our health far beyond the intestine itself. There is even growing interest in the relationship between our gut health and our brain.

So, as part of this body maintenance series, I’m also going to look at the passengers as well as the vehicle itself.

Meet Your Microbial Passengers

The idea that we’re carrying around trillions of bacteria might not sound particularly reassuring. We’re accustomed to thinking of bacteria as things that cause infections and need to be eliminated with disinfectant and antibiotics.

In reality, most bacteria are perfectly harmless to us, and many are extremely useful.

Our large intestine contains an enormous and diverse community of bacteria and other microorganisms. Different species specialise in different jobs, and one of their most important tasks is dealing with parts of our diet that our own digestive enzymes can’t completely break down.

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In this story, fibre is particularly important (and where have we heard that before?) as some gut bacteria ferment certain fibres and produce compounds called short-chain fatty acids. Cells lining the bowel can use these, and they help maintain the intestinal environment and communicate with other parts of the body.

The gut microbiome also interacts extensively with our immune system. That’s perhaps not surprising when you think about it. The intestine is one of the largest interfaces between the outside world and the inside of our bodies, and our immune system must constantly distinguish between harmless food, friendly microorganisms, and potential threats.

Overall, the relationship between us and our gut microbiome is complicated and confusing, and science is still working out exactly how it all fits together.

When the Ecosystem Gets Out of Balance

You may have heard the word dysbiosis, which describes an alteration or imbalance in the microbial community associated with poorer health.

It’s tempting to think of our gut microbiome as being populated by “good bacteria” and “bad bacteria”, but reality is considerably more complicated. A healthy microbiome isn’t simply about having lots of one particular friendly bacterium. Diversity, balance, and the environment in which those microorganisms live all matter. And we now know that changes in our gut microbiome are linked to a growing list of conditions, including inflammatory bowel disease (IBS), obesity, and metabolic disorders. Researchers are also investigating links to cardiovascular disease, immune function, and even neurological and mental health conditions. As I said, it is a complex story.

However, we need to be a bit careful.

Just because we find that people with a particular disease have a different gut microbiome doesn’t necessarily mean that the microbiome caused the disease. Sometimes the disease, medication, or changed diet may itself have altered the microbiome. That is, what came first? Did the disease come first, then the change in the gut microbiome, or did the change in the gut microbiome come first, and then the disease? It’s not always easy to tell.

Basically, we’re learning a lot, but still have a long way to go to fully understand the importance of our gut microbiome.

Plus, as the “microbiome” has become fashionable, and whenever something becomes fashionable, there will inevitably be somebody who tries to sell us a miracle product. So, watch out for that. Don’t be taken in.

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How We Upset the Neighbours

One thing we do know is that our gut ecosystem can change.

Diet is a major influence. If we eat a varied diet with plenty of plant foods and fibre, we feed a wide variety of intestinal microorganisms. If our diet consists largely of highly processed foods with relatively little fibre, we provide a very different environment.

It’s a little like maintaining a garden. Plant lots of different things and create the right conditions, and you encourage a varied ecosystem. Cover everything in concrete and the wildlife options become somewhat limited.

Plus, age, illness, stress, changes in activity, and many other factors can influence our gut microbiome. Like everything else in the body, the microbiome doesn’t exist in isolation.

Another factor that can significantly impact the gut microbiome is antibiotics.

We use antibiotics to kill or inhibit bacteria causing an infection, but they’re not very selective about which bacteria they disturb along the way. A course of antibiotics can therefore alter the gut microbiome, sometimes quite substantially.

However, that doesn’t mean we should avoid antibiotics when they’re medically necessary. Antibiotics are among the most important medicines ever developed and can be lifesaving. It simply means using them appropriately, and not unnecessarily.

Feeding Your Microbiome

The good news is that looking after the gut microbiome doesn’t require an expensive cupboard full of supplements.

In fact, some of the best advice is remarkably familiar.

Eat a varied diet containing plenty of plant foods.

Vegetables, fruit, whole grains, beans, lentils, nuts, and seeds provide more than vitamins and minerals. They also contain different types of fibre and other compounds that reach the gut and provide substrates for our microbial residents.

Variety matters because different microorganisms prefer different foods. Eating the same three vegetables every day may be better than eating none, but eating a broad range of plant foods gives the microbial community much more variety.

Fermented foods such as live yoghurt, kefir, sauerkraut, and kimchi can also form part of a varied diet. Research interest is growing in how fermented foods might influence the microbiome, although once again we should resist turning them into miracle cures — a spoonful of sauerkraut isn’t going to undo thirty years of poor diet!

What About Probiotics?

Walk into almost any health-food shop or supermarket, and you’ll find shelves filled with probiotics promising to improve your gut and, hence, your overall health.

Some probiotic strains have evidence for particular uses, but “probiotic” isn’t a single treatment. Different products contain different organisms, in different amounts, and their effects aren’t necessarily interchangeable.

For most healthy people, maintaining a healthy gut shouldn’t start with an expensive supplement.

It should be food.

I rather like the distinction between probiotics and prebiotics.

Probiotics provide live microorganisms, whereas prebiotics are substances in food that existing beneficial gut microorganisms can use.

In other words, rather than continually buying new residents, it may make sense to feed the ones already living there.

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Repairing the Garden

If your diet hasn’t been particularly gut-friendly, or you have just had a course of antibiotics, there’s no need to declare the microbiome permanently ruined.

The microbiome responds remarkably well to what we eat.

The sensible approach to repairing our gut microbiome is going for gradual improvement rather than suddenly consuming enormous quantities of fibre because you’ve read that fibre is good for you. Your intestinal bacteria may be delighted by the unexpected banquet; you may be rather less delighted by the resulting havoc wreaked on your intestines.

Increasing fibre gradually gives the digestive system time to adapt, and drinking enough fluid is important as fibre intake rises.

This is another example of the philosophy we’ve followed throughout this body maintenance series. Dramatic interventions are rarely as useful as small changes that become permanent habits.

Hence, if you are trying to repair your microbiome, try adding some beans to a meal. Choose wholegrain bread occasionally. Eat another portion of vegetables. Add some nuts or seeds. Try a food you don’t normally eat. Eat some fruit instead of that chocolate bar. Small changes.

The objective isn’t to create the world’s greatest microbiome by next Tuesday. It’s to create an environment in which a healthy microbial community can thrive for years.

The Gut Is Part of the Whole Machine

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the gut microbiome is how well it illustrates a theme that has run throughout this series.

Nothing in our bodies operates independently.

What we eat affects our gut microorganisms. Those microorganisms produce substances that interact with our intestinal cells and immune system. Our diet influences our weight and muscles. Exercise influences our metabolism. Sleep affects appetite and wellbeing.

It’s all connected.

The more we learn about the gut microbiome, the less sensible it seems to think of the intestine as simply a pipe through which yesterday’s dinner travels.

It’s an ecosystem.

And we’re responsible for maintaining it.

This Week’s Maintenance Task

This week, have a look at the variety of plant foods you’re eating.

Not the quantity. The variety.

Think about vegetables, fruit, whole grains, beans, lentils, nuts, and seeds. Are you eating broadly from those groups, or have you settled into the same handful of foods every week?

If the answer is the latter, don’t completely redesign your diet. Add something. Try a different vegetable. Add a handful of nuts or seeds. Put some beans or lentils into a meal. Swap something refined for a wholegrain version.

Your microbial passengers probably won’t send you a thank-you card. But they’ll certainly notice the change.

After all, as we have seen, maintaining the vehicle is important. But it also turns out we need to look after the trillions of tiny passengers helping to keep it running.

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Next week

Next week, in issue 275 (126), I will introduce the Retirement Athlete. That is, I will look at improving our retirement health, not just maintaining it.

Thanks

Thanks for taking the time to read this newsletter, and please don’t hesitate to share it with your friends or on social media using the buttons below.

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If you want to say ‘thanks’ to the newsletter, why not buy me a cup of tea?

Until next time,

Nick

PS: If you would like to contribute something to the newsletter — a story, advice, or anything else — please get in touch.

Please note: I am not a medical professional, and the above is not medical advice and is based on what I have read on the subject over the years. My background is a PhD in biochemistry with experience in biomedical research and teaching.

Welcome

Welcome to issue 273 (124) — the weighty subject of weight. In this newsletter, I’ll look at why weight is an issue and why we gain weight as we age (the answer may surprise you).

Now, body weight is a subject I know well, both personally (I have always had trouble keeping my weight under control) and professionally. Professionally, I used to teach students why we gain weight as we age and how excessive weight can affect overall health.

Please note: I am not a medical professional, and what follows is not medical advice and is based on what I have read on the subject over the years. My background is a PhD in biochemistry with experience in biomedical research and teaching.

Weight – Carrying Too Much Cargo

One annoying thing about getting older is that food seems to become more efficient.

When I was younger, I could eat considerably more than I do today without giving it much thought. A large meal disappeared, the calories apparently evaporating overnight, and my weight remained much the same. These days, I can only have to walk past and glance at a packet of biscuits, and it feels like I’ve gained half a pound.

This is, of course, scientifically impossible.

But sometimes it doesn’t feel that way.

Weight gain is something many people encounter as they age, and it’s very easy to blame ourselves for it. We assume we’re eating too much, exercising too little or simply lacking willpower. Sometimes those things play a part, but other changes are happening too. Changes beyond our control. That is, our bodies change. They are no longer the same machines they were thirty years ago, and the amount of fuel they require has changed.

Unfortunately, our appetite doesn’t always get the memo that we need less food, and we keep adding the same amount of fuel to the tank.

The Engine Is Idling More Slowly

Even when we’re doing absolutely nothing, our bodies require a surprising amount of energy.

Our heart is beating (hopefully), our brain is working (again, hopefully), cells are repairing themselves, our kidneys are filtering blood, and our lungs are moving air in and out. All of this requires energy, and the amount we need to keep the machinery ticking over is known as the Basal Metabolic Rate, or BMR. And, several factors influence BMR, including our size (weight), sex, body composition, physical activity level, and our age.

You’ll notice that age is one of the factors that determines our BMR. And it’s a negative component — it is inversely proportional. That is, as our age increases, our BMR decreases. We need less energy to run the body, but we keep taking onboard the same amount of fuel.

Part of the decrease in BMR comes from losing muscle. Muscle is relatively expensive tissue for the body to maintain, so having less of it means we generally burn fewer calories. And muscle burns calories, even when we are sitting around not using it.

Retirement can add another change. Many of the small movements associated with working disappear. We may no longer walk to the station, climb office stairs, wander between meetings or spend as much time on our feet. None of those activities felt like exercise, but together they could consume a surprising amount of energy.

The result is an unfortunate bit of mathematics. If we continue eating roughly the same amount while using slightly less energy, the excess has to go somewhere. And the human body is extremely good at storing it for later. Unfortunately, “later” rarely arrives. And our body stores this excess energy as fat — we store it as weight.

Here is an example of this in operation that I used to share with my students. It’s not 100% accurate and makes some assumptions. But it’s an interesting exercise that highlights the problem.

Let’s say we are 20 again, and our weight is stable at an ideal, healthy level.

Let’s say we have a certain level of physical activity, maintain it as we age, and add just two chocolate biscuits per day to our diet, with no other changes in calories. At what age would we be classed as ’clinically obese’?

I’ll give you the answer at the end of this newsletter.

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And Then There’s BMI

Another abbreviation that inevitably appears whenever weight is discussed is BMI, or Body Mass Index.

BMI compares our weight with our height and gives us a rough indication of whether our weight falls within a range associated with lower or higher health risks.

Now, BMI as a metric is deeply flawed, but it’s useful because it’s simple. And remember, BMI isn’t a medical crystal ball that will predict your future health.

One major problem with BMI is that it doesn’t know whether the weight it’s measuring is muscle or fat. If the weight is fat, it doesn’t know where the body stores it. BMI also doesn’t know how fit we are, what our blood pressure is, or whether we can comfortably walk five miles.

For example, two people can have the same BMI while having entirely different levels of fitness and health. Top athletes can have a BMI that suggests they need to lose weight; that is, their BMI suggests they are overweight or even clinically obese, when in fact they are super fit and world champions in their chosen field. Their weight isn’t bad weight; it’s muscle.

That said, BMI isn’t useless. It’s a convenient, and deeply flawed, tool.

A bathroom scale is a tool too. So is a tape measure. Problems begin when we allow any single number to become the entire definition of our health.

For me, the more interesting question in retirement isn’t simply, “How much do I weigh?” It’s “Is my weight stopping me from doing anything I want to do?”

Weight and the Shrinking World

This is where weight becomes particularly relevant to body maintenance.

Carrying extra weight means asking the body to move it everywhere we go. Upstairs, along footpaths, through airports, around shops and, in my case, along towpaths and through locks.

Imagine putting a 10-kilogram (22 lb) bag into a rucksack and wearing it all day. You would certainly notice it. Your knees would notice it too.

However, body weight isn’t the same thing as carrying a 10-kilogram (22 lb) bag, as our body adapts to carrying it. But the principle is similar: movement requires more effort when there’s more mass to move. And that can create another of those vicious circles we’ve encountered several times in this series. Movement becomes harder, so we move less. Moving less reduces fitness and muscle strength, which makes movement harder still. See the problem?

Eventually, the problem isn’t really weight.

It’s mobility.

And mobility, as we’ve discussed throughout this series, is closely connected to independence.

The Great Diet Starts Monday

The traditional response to discovering we’ve gained a few pounds (or kilos) is to announce that we’re going on a diet. Usually on Monday, as Monday is apparently the internationally recognised starting date for all diets.

We remove everything enjoyable from the kitchen, buy an alarming quantity of salad and embark upon a regime so strict that no normal human being could maintain it for more than a couple of weeks.

For a while, it works.

Then somebody has a birthday.

Or we go away for the weekend.

Or somebody produces a particularly good cake.

The diet collapses, normal eating resumes, and eventually the weight returns.

Perhaps the problem isn’t us? Perhaps the problem is the idea that weight management has to be dramatic.

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Small Changes Beat Grand Gestures

One recurring theme of this Body Maintenance series has been that small things done regularly are usually more useful and effective than occasional heroic efforts.

Weight management is no different.

If our energy requirements have fallen slightly as we’ve aged, we don’t necessarily need a revolutionary new diet. Sometimes we need to eat a little less than we used to while moving a little more.

That might mean slightly smaller portions, fewer snacks between meals, or being a little more selective about which treats are actually worth eating. It might mean walking more often, gardening, doing jobs around the house, or spending more time on activities that keep us moving.

None of those changes sounds particularly impressive, and that’s probably why they work. They can become part of normal life, rather than something we endure until we’ve “finished the diet.”

And here is another thing to keep in mind. One component of BMR is weight, and it’s proportional. That is, as our weight drops, so does our BMR, so we constantly have to adjust our diet and exercise regimes; otherwise, we reach a point where our weight stabilises, and we lose no more.

Don’t Lose the Wrong Weight

Another reason I don’t think the bathroom scales or BMI should dominate our thinking is this.

We don’t simply want to lose weight.

We want to avoid losing muscle.

Earlier in this series, I wrote about sarcopenia — the gradual loss of muscle that accompanies ageing. If we dramatically reduce how much we eat without paying attention to protein and strength, some of the weight we lose may be muscle rather than fat. And that isn’t a good trade in retirement, as while the number on the scales and our BMI may look better, climbing the stairs will become harder.

That is why weight management needs to sit alongside the other things we’ve discussed: eating enough protein, staying active, and continuing to challenge our muscles.

The aim isn’t simply to become lighter.

It’s to remain capable.

Think Like a Boat Owner

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I’ve found myself thinking about all this in terms of my narrowboat, where weight matters.

I wouldn’t deliberately fill every available space with unnecessary cargo and then complain that the boat was sitting lower in the water. Equally, I wouldn’t throw the engine, batteries, and water tank overboard simply because I wanted the boat to weigh less.

Some weight is useful.

Some is essential.

Some is simply cargo we don’t really need.

Our bodies are no different.

Muscle is useful cargo. Strong bones are useful cargo. The various organs that keep us alive are definitely worth retaining.

Excess body fat, however, can become cargo we’re carrying around without gaining much benefit from it.

Perhaps that’s a more useful way to think about weight in retirement, not as a battle with the bathroom scales or our BMI, but as part of keeping the vessel appropriately loaded for the journey ahead.

One Final Weighty Thought

Finally, don’t think of fat in our bodies as all bad. We need fat to live and survive. It’s a buffer against starvation; it helps protect organs and can keep us warm. In fact, research shows that if we had no fat, we would be diabetic.

One more thing to consider about fat is where we store it. Suppose it’s all on our stomach (so-called apple shape); that is really bad and is linked to a range of medical conditions such as high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes.

Fat on your backside (butts), also called a pear shape, isn’t so bad. And weirdly, you can also be fat and look thin, as the fat can be wrapped around our organs.

It’s a tricky one…

And the Answer

Earlier I asked: Assuming ideal weight, 20 years old, no change in physical activity, no change in calorie intake other than two additional chocolate biscuits per day — at what age would you become clinically obese? The answer: your mid-to-late 30s. A scary thought! It shows that it doesn’t take much to tip the scales the wrong way.

This Week’s Maintenance Task

This week, don’t start a diet.

Instead, spend a few days noticing what you actually eat and how much you move. Are there calories you’re consuming largely out of habit? Has a portion gradually become larger over the years? Has an activity you once did regularly quietly disappeared since retirement?

Then choose one small change.

Not ten. Just one.

Perhaps leave one snack in the cupboard, make one portion slightly smaller, or add an extra walk to your week. Choose something so modest that you can imagine still doing it six months from now.

Because maintaining a healthy weight in retirement probably isn’t about finding enough willpower to survive the next diet. It’s about gradually adjusting the amount of fuel and cargo to suit the vehicle we have today.

The engine may be a little older and its fuel requirements may have changed, but there are hopefully still plenty of miles left in it.

There’s simply no point carrying unnecessary cargo for the entire journey.

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Next week

Next week in issue 274 (125) — The Gut – Looking after a hidden ecosystem that can have a surprising impact on our overall health.

Thanks

Thanks for taking the time to read this newsletter, and please don’t hesitate to share it with your friends or on social media using the buttons below.

Share

If you want to say ‘thanks’ to the newsletter, why not buy me a cup of tea?

Until next time,

Nick

PS: If you would like to contribute something to the newsletter — a story, advice, or anything else — please get in touch.

Please note: I am not a medical professional, and the above is not medical advice and is based on what I have read on the subject over the years. My background is a PhD in biochemistry with experience in biomedical research and teaching.

Welcome

Welcome to issue 272 (123) — the rust you cannot see…. Things may look all shiny and nice on the surface, but what is going on underneath?

Please note: I am not a medical professional, and what follows is not medical advice and is based on what I have read on the subject.

The art of car maintenance

When I was a student, I owned a series of dodgy cars. Cars that were well past their ‘best by’ dates. But they were all I could afford.

I did my best to look after these cars. I did oil changes and minor ’non-safety’ work. I had a professional fix anything safety-related. I did my best to keep the cars looking good, but there was always one issue, particularly with UK cars from the 1970s and 80s: rust.

Rust was devious. It had an annoying habit of beginning somewhere I couldn’t easily see —under a fitting, behind a panel or beneath a perfectly respectable-looking coat of paint. By the time it finally appears on the surface, it had often been quietly working away for months, or even years.

It occurred to me recently that our minds can be similar.

The Rust You Can’t See

Throughout this Body Maintenance series, I have talked about muscles, balance, flexibility, nutrition, and sleep. Those are all important, but they’re also relatively easy to notice. If your knee hurts, you know about it. If you’re tired, you know about that too. However, our emotional wellbeing is rather different. Sometimes it quietly changes without us noticing until somebody else asks, “Are you all right?” and we realise we don’t actually know the answer.

Looking Fine Isn’t the Same as Feeling Fine

One curious thing about retirement is that people often assume it’s automatically a happy time. After all, we’ve escaped the alarm clock, the endless meetings have stopped, and nobody expects us to answer emails on a Sunday afternoon. Surely, this is what we’ve been working towards for decades?

For many people, retirement really is everything we hoped it would be.

For others, however, it comes with an unexpected adjustment. And this possible adjustment worried me a lot.

For me, work didn’t simply provide an income. It provided structure, routine, purpose and regular contact with other people. I will admit that my work defined me.

And even when colleagues or students drove me to distraction, it contributed something to my daily life.

Then, almost overnight, all of that disappeared.

Some people embrace the freedom immediately. Others discover that freedom and direction aren’t quite the same thing. They wonder why they feel slightly adrift when retirement was supposed to be the easy part.

Personally, I have been pleasantly surprised to find that I have fallen into the first category. I embraced the freedom immediately. However, feeling slightly adrift when we retire is nothing unusual. In fact, I suspect it’s far more common than many people realise.

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The Quiet Visitor

Physical problems generally make themselves known with remarkable efficiency. A sore back complains loudly. A painful knee reminds us every time we climb the stairs. A cold seems determined to inform everyone within earshot that we’ve caught it.

Emotional wellbeing tends to be much quieter. Much more subtle. Less noticeable.

Loneliness doesn’t usually arrive dramatically. It slips into life almost unnoticed. There are fewer conversations, a cancelled lunch, friends who move away, neighbours who become busier and children who naturally have lives of their own. None of these changes seems particularly important on their own, but together, they can leave us feeling far more isolated than we ever expected.

Anxiety can develop in much the same way. Small decisions become surprisingly difficult, minor issues seem rather larger than they did before, and confidence quietly shrinks without asking permission.

The danger is assuming all this is an unavoidable part of getting older.

Sometimes it isn’t.

Sometimes it’s simply a sign that our minds need a little maintenance too.

Purpose Doesn’t Retire

One of the biggest misconceptions about retirement is that the ultimate goal is to do absolutely nothing.

Now, I’ll happily admit that doing absolutely nothing for a few days can be delightful. After years of deadlines, it’s a wonderful novelty. I love waking up in the morning with nothing to do.

The difficulty is that human beings don’t seem particularly well-designed for permanent idleness.

Most of us enjoy having something to look forward to. We like solving problems, learning new things, and feeling useful. Purpose doesn’t necessarily come from paid employment. It can come from working on a project, volunteering in the community, writing a newsletter, learning a language, helping the grandchildren with their homework or finally growing the vegetables we’ve always talked about growing.

The activity itself is almost secondary.

What matters is having a reason to get up in the morning that extends beyond wondering what’s on television.

Retirement may remove our job description, but it doesn’t remove our need for purpose.

Keep the Brain Curious

Earlier in this series, I talked about maintaining muscles through regular use.

The brain deserves the same treatment.

One of the wonderful things about retirement is that we can finally learn purely because we want to, not because somebody is going to examine us afterwards. We can read books we’ve always meant to read, visit places we’ve never seen before, develop new hobbies or become curious about subjects that never previously crossed our minds. For me, this is one of the great joys of retirement. Waking up with nothing to do, and then what I like to refer to as ‘falling down the rabbit hole of research’. In other words, a question or thought occurs to me, and I spend several hours exploring and learning about the subject. Bliss!

Our brains seem to enjoy novelty like that. They relish new experiences, interesting conversations and learning unfamiliar skills. This all encourages our brains to keep making connections. It’s a workout for the brain. And the good news is, there is no examination at the end. The curiosity is quite enough.

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Friends Are Preventative Maintenance

One thing I’ve become increasingly convinced about is that friendships deserve a place in any discussion about health.

When we think about looking after ourselves, we usually think about eating vegetables, getting enough sleep and going for a walk. We rarely think about meeting someone for coffee.

Perhaps we should.

Good conversations stimulate the brain. Friends make us laugh, encourage us when life becomes difficult, and often notice changes in us before we notice them ourselves. Sometimes simply hearing someone ask, “How are you really?” is enough to remind us that we’re not facing life entirely on our own.

Of course, friendships don’t maintain themselves.

Without a workplace bringing people together every day, retirement often requires a conscious effort to keep in touch. A quick phone call, an invitation for coffee or joining a local group may seem like small things, but over time they become just as important as many of the other maintenance jobs we’ve discussed in this series.

Looking After the Whole Person

As this series has developed, one thing has become increasingly obvious to me.

Body maintenance isn’t really about the body.

It’s about the whole person.

Strong muscles help us remain active. Good balance helps us stay independent. Good nutrition and sleep keep the engine running smoothly. But none of those things exists in isolation. Together, they support a life that stays interesting, enjoyable, and connected to other people.

Mental wellbeing quietly links everything together.

Like rust beneath the paintwork, poor mental health often develops out of sight. If we ignore it for too long, it eventually begins affecting everything else.

The encouraging news is that looking after our mental wellbeing doesn’t usually require anything dramatic. Staying curious, keeping active, maintaining friendships and finding purpose are all forms of preventative maintenance.

They’re rather easier to overlook because nobody can see us doing them.

This Week’s Maintenance Task

This week, don’t count your steps.

Instead, think about your connections.

Is there someone you’ve been meaning to phone? Is there a local group you’ve been thinking about joining? Is there a hobby you’ve always wanted to explore now that retirement has finally given you the time?

Whatever it is, take one small step.

After all, retirement has given many of us the gift of time. It would be a shame not to spend some of it maintaining the part of ourselves that quietly influences every other aspect of life.

Because just as the worst rust often begins where nobody can see it, some of the most important maintenance is the maintenance that nobody else notices.

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Next week

Next week in issue 273 (124) — the weighty subject of weight. Why we gain it, and why we need to keep it under control.

Thanks

Thanks for taking the time to read this newsletter, and please don’t hesitate to share it with your friends or on social media using the buttons below.

Share

If you want to say ‘thanks’ to the newsletter, why not buy me a cup of tea?

Until next time,

Nick

PS: If you would like to contribute something to the newsletter — a story, advice, or anything else — please get in touch.

Please note: I am not a medical professional, and the above is not medical advice and is based on what I have read on the subject.

Welcome

Welcome to issue 271 (122) — time for a health check?

In the UK, we have to put our cars in for an annual MOT (Ministry of Transport) check to make sure they are safe. To make sure they are roadworthy. In other parts of the world, there are similar checks. In the US, I believe it is called a safety inspection; in Ireland: NCT (National Car Test); in New Zealand: WoF (Warrant of Fitness); in France, Spain, and Belgium: Contrôle technique. You get the idea.

So, when did your body last have an MOT? When did you last have a health check? And what did you check?

The Annual MOT

Every year my car receives something that I approach with a curious mixture of confidence and mild anxiety.

The dreaded MOT.

I drive to the garage convinced that everything is probably fine, while simultaneously wondering whether the mechanic is about to emerge shaking his head while holding a mysterious part that I’ve never heard of. Apparently it’s worn out, has become detached, or is no longer communicating with another equally mysterious component. My car is unsafe.

Cars, it seems, are wonderfully talented at developing expensive problems without first asking permission. A bit like our bodies.

The interesting thing is that I would never dream of skipping the MOT. For a start, it’s a legal requirement; second, it is a detailed safety check of my car, and that is a good thing.

My car might pass with flying colours, or the MOT might reveal a small problem that needs attention before it develops into something much more serious. Either way, I’d much rather know.

Yet, many of us are surprisingly reluctant to give ourselves the same level of attention. Why?

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Prevention Isn’t Very Exciting

One reason routine health checks are so easy to postpone is that they rarely feel urgent. If your car refuses to start, that’s urgent. If your boiler stops working in the middle of winter, that’s urgent. If your roof starts leaking, you’ll probably be on the phone to somebody before the bucket is full.

Health is different.

Many common conditions develop quietly over many years without producing obvious symptoms.

High blood pressure doesn’t usually tap you on the shoulder and announce its arrival. High cholesterol rarely introduces itself. Changes in eyesight or hearing often happen so gradually that our brains adapt, leaving us blissfully unaware that anything has changed until someone else points it out — or until we suddenly realise we’ve been asking people to repeat themselves rather more often than we used to.

The difficulty is that by the time we notice, the problem may already have been present for quite a while. That’s why routine health checks are so valuable. They aren’t really about looking for illness; they’re about identifying opportunities to stay healthy.

The Dashboard Warning Lights

Modern cars seem to have an extraordinary number of warning lights. Some appear to indicate genuine problems. Others seem to illuminate simply because it’s raining or because the calendar has reached a Tuesday.

Our bodies have warning lights too, although they’re usually much quieter.

Take blood pressure, for example. Most of us have no idea what ours happens to be today, yet it quietly influences the health of our heart, brain, and kidneys every hour of every day. High blood pressure typically produces no symptoms at all. The only reliable way to know whether it’s normal is to measure it occasionally.

Cholesterol is much the same. You can’t feel it, hear it or judge it by looking in the mirror. It’s one of those things that benefits from being checked from time to time, particularly as we get older.

Then there are our eyes, ears, and teeth.

Vision changes so gradually that we don’t notice we’re holding menus a little further away each year until our arms mysteriously become too short. Plus, an eye check can reveal early tell-tale signs of a range of medical conditions.

Hearing loss can be equally subtle. The television volume creeps up a notch every few months, conversations in busy restaurants become harder to follow, and before long the family starts commenting on how loud the television has become. A loss of hearing can lead to social isolation, mental health issues and even contribute to the development of dementia.

And teeth. Your teeth seem fine until one day a bit snaps off, or you eat an ice cream, and the pain is unbearable. And oral health has been linked to other health issues and can contribute to heart disease.

The purpose of these checks isn’t to confirm that we’re ageing.

We already know that.

Their purpose is to help us continue enjoying life with the best vision, hearing, teeth and general health that we reasonably can.

However, you can take things too far.

Don’t Become a Professional Patient

Having said all that, there is another trap waiting for us.

It’s perfectly possible to become so focused on monitoring our health that we forget to enjoy living it.

Modern technology makes this surprisingly easy.

Watches can monitor our heart rate, sleep, exercise, stress levels and goodness knows what else. Bathroom scales can send our weight directly to an app. Some devices count our steps, analyse our sleep and even remind us that we’ve been sitting down for too long.

Useful?

Absolutely.

Necessary every minute of every day?

Probably not.

Some people seem to spend so much time collecting health data that they never actually relax. Every slight ache becomes a potential diagnosis, every unusual heartbeat demands immediate investigation, and every online symptom checker somehow concludes that immediate catastrophe is only hours away.

Body maintenance was never intended to become a full-time occupation.

The aim isn’t to monitor every possible measurement. It’s to identify the important things, keep an eye on them at sensible intervals, and then get on with enjoying retirement.

Your Personal Service Schedule

One thing life has taught me is that maintenance is much easier when it’s planned rather than reactive.

I have a maintenance schedule for my boat, my car, and my bike.

For the boat and car, engine oil is changed at the recommended intervals. Filters are replaced before they cause problems. That is, I don’t wait until the engine produces clouds of smoke or refuses to start before deciding perhaps it’s time for a little preventative maintenance.

Admittedly, the bike is a lot easier (and cheaper), but I still regularly give it a check over.

Our bodies deserve the same approach.

That doesn’t mean becoming obsessive or constantly visiting the doctor. It simply means deciding that certain things are worth checking from time to time. Blood pressure. Cholesterol when appropriate. Regular eye examinations. Hearing checks if conversations are becoming more difficult. Dental appointments. Paying attention to new skin changes or persistent symptoms rather than hoping they’ll quietly disappear.

That is, we should be listening to our bodies and not ignoring them.

And, if your health professional calls you in for a check-up, or they send you a test kit in the post, go for the check-up, do the test. Please don’t ignore it because “I feel fine and don’t want to waste their time”; go for the appointment and take the test. You may catch something at an early stage when it is easier to fix.

None of these takes very long, yet each has the potential to identify a small problem before it becomes a much larger one. That’s really what good maintenance is all about.

As I used to say to my tutees, “if you have a problem that is impacting your studies, come and see me when it is a small problem, as small problems are easier to deal with than large problems”. What applies to my student studies also applies to our health. Catch things when they are small problems.

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Looking After the Whole Machine

One of the things I have enjoyed while writing this Body Maintenance series (and through my years of learning and teaching biomedical sciences) is realising just how connected everything is.

Walking helps maintain strength. Strength improves balance. Good balance reduces the risk of falls. Good nutrition supports muscles. Sleep allows the body to recover. Regular health checks help identify problems before they begin interfering with everything else.

None of these exists in isolation. They all work together, quietly supporting one another, in much the same way that every component of an engine contributes to keeping it working. Ignore one part for long enough, and eventually, it begins to affect everything else.

The same is true of us.

Body maintenance isn’t about fixing one thing.

It’s about keeping the whole machine working as well as it possibly can.

This Week’s Maintenance Task

This week, spend ten quiet minutes creating your own personal maintenance schedule.

Think about the routine checks that apply to you, and ask yourself a simple question: Am I up to date? Perhaps it’s time to have your blood pressure checked. Maybe you’ve been putting off an eye test or a visit to the dentist. Perhaps you’ve noticed that conversations in noisy places are becoming more difficult to follow. If everything is already up to date, please take a moment to congratulate yourself and enjoy a well-earned cup of tea.

After all, the purpose of an MOT isn’t to prove that something is wrong. It’s to give us confidence that everything is still working as it should — or to spot a small problem before it has the opportunity to become a much bigger one.

Next week

Next week, in issue 272 (123), I will be looking at what could be viewed as “The Rust You Can’t See”. That is, I will be looking at mental health and emotional wellbeing.

Thanks

Thanks for taking the time to read this newsletter, and please don’t hesitate to share it with your friends or on social media using the buttons below.

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Until next time,

Nick

PS: If you would like to contribute something to the newsletter — a story, advice, or anything else — please get in touch.

Welcome

Welcome to issue 270 (121) — The Bounce-Back Factor.

This week, I look at the importance of fully recovering from illness or injury and how we can avoid some of the pitfalls that keep us from getting back to our old selves.

The Bounce-Back Factor

Back in the winter, I managed to catch one of those bugs that was determined to remind me who’s really in charge. It was nothing particularly dramatic — no flashing blue lights or hospital visits — just one of those unpleasant viruses that float around during the winter months and quietly removes all your batteries overnight. For several days, I had absolutely no enthusiasm for doing anything more energetic than making another cup of tea. I felt exhausted and weak all the time. And I ached.

Eventually, I began to feel better and, naturally, concluded that I was fully recovered. So I decided to get on with life. Within an hour, I was back on the sofa, wondering who had stolen all my energy again. It was a very useful reminder that there’s a very big difference between feeling better and being fully recovered.

When I was younger, feeling better and being fully recovered often happened at the same time. However, as I have got older, I have noticed they have become rather more independent.

The Elastic Band

One of the realities of ageing is that we usually still recover remarkably well — but perhaps not quite as quickly as we once did.

I sometimes think of the body as an old elastic band. A brand-new one stretches and immediately springs back into shape. An older one still works perfectly well, but it takes a little longer to recover its original form. There’s nothing wrong with it; it simply isn’t quite as elastic as it used to be.

Our bodies — well, my body — behave in much the same way.

When I was in my twenties, I could recover from illness, injury, an exceptionally busy weekend, or a late night out with friends, with little more than an early night. In retirement and old age, I am finding that recovery still happens, but it generally requires a little more patience.

Unfortunately, patience has never been one of my strongest qualities.

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The Trap We Rarely Notice

One of the biggest dangers after illness isn’t actually the illness itself. It’s what happens afterwards. And I know this to be the case as I have experienced this myself, but at least now I know to watch out for it.

Imagine someone who walks three miles every day. They catch a nasty cold and quite sensibly stop walking for a week while they recover. A few days later they’re feeling much better, and decide to walk only one mile “just for now.”

That seems entirely reasonable? And it seems sensible.

The problem is that next week they’re still walking one mile. Then the weather turns wet, another commitment appears in the diary, and before long one mile has quietly become the new normal. The original three-mile walk has disappeared without anyone ever consciously deciding to give it up.

I suspect this happens far more often than we realise. The illness ends, but the reduced activity quietly lingers. I can point to at least two specific examples of this happening to me.

I used to do long walks carrying excess weight in a rucksack — a 9 kg (ca. 20 lb) lump of metal (this is called rucking). I picked up a knee injury on one walk and decided to stop carrying the weight so my knee could recover. I still haven’t got back to the 9 kg; I am stuck on 4.5 kg. And it’s been months since I injured my knee.

Another example is my electric bike — I use the electric motor sparingly; I use it more like I would use gears to help me get up hills.

Earlier in the summer, I picked up a light cold — nothing to stop me going out and doing things, but it was there. And to help me along, I started using the electric motor on the bike on the flat sections of my ride — the other day, a month or more after I had recovered from the cold, I was still using the electric motor on the flat.

We have to watch out for this. Little adaptations and reductions in activity to help us recover become the new normal. It’s a slippery slope.

The Body Adapts Both Ways

One thing I’ve learned from teaching biomedical sciences for years, and from writing this Body Maintenance newsletter series, is that our bodies are wonderfully adaptable. We usually think of that as good news because it means we can become fitter, stronger and healthier.

However, that adaptability works in both directions.

If we gradually ask more of our bodies, they generally respond by becoming stronger. If we gradually ask less, they become equally good at doing less. Our bodies aren’t being awkward; they are simply being efficient.

Our bodies have no way of knowing whether we are permanently retired from gardening or whether we have just had a fortnight of flu. Our bodies respond to the workload given.

That’s one reason why returning to previous activity levels can be surprisingly difficult. During our recovery, the body has quietly become accustomed to doing less. We now have to persuade it that the old job description still applies. We have to work and push to get back to our old levels of activity.

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Building a Recovery Reserve

People often talk about resilience as though it’s something we’re born with. That is, some people have it, and others don’t.

That argument does not convince me.

I think physical resilience is something we build, often without realising it. Every walk we take, every afternoon spent gardening, every flight of stairs we climb, every strength exercise we complete and every good night’s sleep we get, quietly adds something to our reserves.

You could view it as putting money into a savings account for a rainy day. We invest in our resilience now, and it pays off later when we need it. That is, when illness, injury, or surgery eventually arrives — and sooner or later, it visits all of us — we have something to draw upon.

This is one reason why body maintenance matters, even when we feel perfectly healthy. We’re not simply looking after today’s body. We’re preparing tomorrow’s body to cope with challenges that haven’t yet happened.

People who are reasonably fit when they begin an illness often recover more quickly than those who were already struggling. Strong muscles are easier to rebuild than weak ones. Good balance is easier to regain than poor balance. Healthy hearts and lungs usually cope better with illness than unhealthy ones.

None of this guarantees an easy recovery.

Life doesn’t offer those sorts of promises.

But it certainly stacks the odds a little more in our favour.

The Courage to Start Again

Perhaps the hardest part of recovery isn’t recovering but restarting.

After several weeks of inactivity, we can find that we have developed a remarkably close relationship with the sofa. The garden suddenly looks enormous, and the walking shoes seem strangely optimistic. And cycling seems an impossible dream.

At this point, many people make one of two mistakes. Some try to return immediately to their previous activity levels, only to exhaust themselves within a day and possibly cause a relapse of the illness. Others wait until they feel completely back to normal before doing anything at all.

However, most successful recoveries happen somewhere between those two extremes.

Slow and steady is the way to go. Make the walk slightly longer. Add a few more minutes to the gardening. Throw in an extra flight of stairs. That is, add in a little bit each day. Take it slowly, and build, and we will soon be back to our old levels; after all, our bodies respond remarkably well to gradual encouragement.

We have to recognise that the new post-illness activity levels are not the new norm. We need to be patient and give ourselves the time to regain our activity levels. Slow and steady wins the day.

This Week’s Maintenance Task

Think back over the past year. Was there a time when illness, injury, or simply life itself caused you to become less active than usual?

If so, ask yourself one simple question.

Have I ever fully returned to where I was before?

If the answer is yes, that’s wonderful. If the answer is no, don’t regard it as failure. Instead, congratulate yourself on recognising the issue and choose one small thing this week that moves you a little closer to your previous level. The small thing might be five extra minutes of walking, another circuit around the garden, or simply climbing the stairs one more time than you usually would. And slowly, regularly add in that small increase until you have returned to your previous level.

Remember, recovery rarely happens in one dramatic leap. It happens through dozens of small steps that eventually add up to something much bigger.

After all, the aim of body maintenance isn’t to avoid every setback. That’s impossible. The real goal is to become the sort of person who can recover when setbacks inevitably arrive.

And in retirement, the ability to bounce back may be one of the most valuable forms of fitness we can possess.

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Next week

Next week in issue 270 (121), I look at the idea of annual health checks — what should we be looking at, and what can we do to keep our body ticking along?

Thanks

Thanks for taking the time to read this newsletter, and please don’t hesitate to share it with your friends or on social media using the buttons below.

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If you want to say ‘thanks’ to the newsletter, why not buy me a cup of tea?

Until next time,

Nick

PS: If you would like to contribute something to the newsletter — a story, advice, or anything else — please get in touch.

Welcome

Welcome to issue 269 (120) — sleep… the wonderful overnight service.

Please note: The following is not advice on how to solve sleeping disorders; it is about the importance of sleep. If you are having problems sleeping, you should speak to your doctor or a sleep specialist.

Sleep

There was a time when I regarded sleep as something of an inconvenience.

As a student, sleep was what happened after an all-night assignment. As a lecturer, it was something I had to fit around lectures, marking, meetings and deadlines. For my students, it sometimes seemed like something to do during my lectures.

For me, there had always seemed to be something more important to do than going to bed.

Looking back, I’m amazed at what my body tolerated.

Nowadays, things are rather different.

If I have a poor night’s sleep, I know about it. My concentration isn’t quite as sharp; I become forgetful and grumpy; perhaps most worrying of all, I find myself wondering why I walked into a room before I’ve actually reached it.

I’ve also discovered that retirement has introduced an unexpected contradiction.

I finally have the freedom to sleep whenever I like, and yet like many retirees I seem to sleep rather less well than I did when I was working.

How can that be?

The Body’s Night Shift

One of the things I hope I have got across in this Body Maintenance series of newsletters is that our bodies are remarkably busy when we’re not paying attention.

During the day they’re occupied keeping us upright, moving us around, digesting lunch and reminding us that perhaps we shouldn’t have had that second slice of cake.

At night, however, they quietly start the maintenance programme.

While we’re asleep, muscles recover from the day’s activities. The brain sorts through memories, deciding what to keep and what can safely be discarded. Hormones are released, tissues are repaired, and the immune system gets on with jobs that are difficult to perform during the hustle and bustle of the day.

In many ways, sleep is rather like taking your car in for an overnight service. (Yes, I’m back on the car analogy.)

The garage closes its doors, the mechanics get to work and, if all goes well, you collect your car the following morning ready for another day’s journey.

Imagine what would happen if you interrupted the mechanics every twenty minutes to ask how they’re getting on. Would the work get done? Would the repairs and maintenance be done to the best of the mechanic’s abilities? Highly unlikely.

That’s more or less what we do when we constantly cut our sleep short.

Why Sleep Changes

One of the comforting things about retirement is discovering that some of our sleep problems are not entirely our fault.

As we get older, sleep changes naturally.

Many people find they become lighter sleepers. Others wake earlier than they used to, while some discover they now require a nocturnal visit to the bathroom that wasn’t part of life thirty years ago.

Then there are the mysterious 3 a.m. thoughts.

For reasons known only to my brain, three o’clock in the morning is apparently the ideal time to analyse every questionable decision I’ve made since 1978. And from speaking to other retirees, it sounds like something similar happened to them.

Problems that seemed perfectly manageable at bedtime suddenly become matters of national importance. Fortunately, such problems usually look much smaller after breakfast.

Of course, not all sleep problems are simply part of ageing. Pain, medication, stress, anxiety and certain medical conditions can all affect sleep. Hence, if you are having persistent sleep problems, it may be worth discussing things with your doctor.

But occasional restless nights?

Welcome to the club.

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Retirement and the Alarm Clock

One of the things I was really looking forward to in retirement was the disappearance of the alarm clock. After all, if you don’t need to be at work at 9 am, why have an alarm to wake you at 7 am?

For decades, I lived by it. A dreaded buzzing sound awoke me.

Now, for me and many of us, every morning feels like a Saturday.

That sounds wonderful — and often it is — but it can also tempt us into abandoning our regular sleep routine. And that can be dangerous.

One night we stay up watching a film.

The next night, we go to bed early because we’re tired.

Then we sleep in because we can.

Bang goes our sleep routine, and then we wonder why our body seems slightly confused.

It turns out that our brains rather like routine, even in retirement. Hence, going to bed and getting up at roughly similar times each day gives our body’s internal clock a helping hand.

Who knew that retirement would involve voluntarily setting ourselves a bedtime?

The Great Nap Debate

Retirement has another wonderful invention.

The afternoon nap.

There are days when an afternoon snooze feels like one of life’s greatest luxuries.

You close your eyes for twenty minutes and wake up two hours later, feeling remarkably refreshed.

Unfortunately, naps can also be a little deceptive.

A short nap, say 10 to 20 minutes, can restore energy and improve alertness. However, a two-hour expedition into deep sleep at four o’clock in the afternoon can leave you wide awake at midnight wondering why everyone else appears to be asleep.

Like many things in life, moderation seems to work best.

A brief nap can be a friend: a long deep nap, an enemy.

An epic afternoon hibernation may relocate tonight’s sleep to tomorrow afternoon.

Here’s another way to think about napping. If you are a person who needs a good eight hours of sleep each night, and you take a two-hour nap in the afternoon, you have already ‘spent’ 25% of your daily sleep allowance. Therefore, why are you surprised when you can’t get to sleep that night and only get six hours? After all, you have clocked your eight hours for the day.

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Helping the Night Shift

The encouraging news is that we can make life a little easier for our overnight maintenance crew.

Our bodies appreciate a little consistency. Going to bed at roughly the same time, keeping the bedroom cool, dark, and comfortable, and allowing ourselves time to unwind before sleep all help create the conditions for a better night’s sleep.

It’s also worth remembering that our brains don’t have an on-off switch.

If we’ve spent the last hour reading alarming news stories, arguing with strangers on social media or watching a television thriller in which everybody appears to be chasing everybody else, it’s perhaps not surprising if the brain decides to remain alert.

Sometimes the most productive thing we can do before bed is… less.

A book.

Some gentle music.

A quiet conversation.

Or simply accepting that tomorrow’s problems will still be there in the morning, and will probably seem considerably less dramatic after a decent night’s sleep.

What I have described above is often referred to as ‘sleep hygiene’ and having good sleep hygiene can really help you get a good night’s sleep.

Sleep is Part of Body Maintenance

Throughout this series I’ve talked about movement, strength, balance, and flexibility.

Sleep belongs on that list too.

Without adequate sleep, muscles recover less effectively. Balance and coordination suffer. Our appetite changes. Concentration declines. Even motivation becomes harder to find.

In other words, sleep quietly supports almost everything else I’ve discussed.

Perhaps that’s why it’s so often overlooked.

You can’t see it happening.

You simply notice the difference when it doesn’t.

This Week’s Maintenance Task

This week, don’t aim for the perfect night’s sleep.

Instead, pay attention to your routine.

Try going to bed at roughly the same time each evening. If you enjoy an afternoon nap, keep it short enough that you’re still ready for bed at night. And if you wake at three in the morning solving the world’s problems, remind yourself that your brain has an unfortunate habit of exaggerating things in the small hours.

Most importantly, don’t think of sleep as wasted time. Think of it as the overnight service that keeps the engine running. After all, even the best-maintained engine occasionally needs to be switched off.

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Next week

Next week, in issue 270 (121), I will look at the Bounce-Back Factor — our ability to recover from illness.

Thanks

Thanks for taking the time to read this newsletter, and please don’t hesitate to share it with your friends or on social media using the buttons below.

Share

If you want to say ‘thanks’ for the newsletter, why not buy me a cup of tea?

Until next time,

Nick

PS: If you would like to contribute something to the newsletter — a story, advice, or anything else — please get in touch.

Please note: The above is not advice on how to solve sleeping disorders; it’s about the importance of sleep. If you are having problems sleeping, you should speak to your doctor or a sleep specialist.

Welcome

Welcome to issue 268 (119), fuelling our retirement journey.

In the following, there are no miracle food supplements to make us live to 100, or diets to help us shed weight; this is just a gentle look at the relationship between food, retirement and old age.

Please note that the following is not nutrition advice. You should speak to your doctor or a nutritionalist before making any changes to your dietary habits.

Fuelling Our Retirement Journey

One of the great pleasures of retirement is that nobody tells us what to eat any more. But then again, apart from our mothers, significant others and our doctor, we very rarely get told what we can and cannot eat. But, for me at least, eating, fuelling my body, has taken on a different feel and meaning in retirement.

Now that I am retired, gone are the hurried lunches grabbed between meetings and the sandwiches eaten at my desk while answering emails. Gone are the evening meals hastily prepared because I had to be out of the house again by seven o’clock or had got home so late and was too tired to cook a proper meal.

Retirement promises us leisurely breakfasts, long lunches and the occasional slice of cake because, well, we’ve earned it.

Actually, make that two slices. And a chocolate biscuit.

The trouble is that retirement has removed many of the routines that previously kept my eating habits in check. The biscuit tin is no longer several hours away in the kitchen. It’s now approximately twelve paces from my sofa. (Not that I’ve measured it, of course.)

The result, at least for me, is that food has become both one of the greatest pleasures of my retirement and one of its greatest challenges. Hence, I’ve concluded that I am probably thinking about food in entirely the wrong way.

Instead of asking, “What do I fancy eating?” perhaps I should occasionally ask, “What does my body need if I expect it to keep working for another twenty or thirty years?”

After all, we wouldn’t fill our car’s tank with whatever happened to be lying around in the garage. We would give it the correct fuel to keep it running.

So why do we sometimes treat ourselves that way?

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We’re Not Dieting – We’re Refuelling

The word “diet” has acquired a rather miserable reputation.

It immediately conjures up images of tiny salads, complicated rules and people who look permanently disappointed.

Fortunately, body maintenance has very little to do with dieting.

This newsletter isn’t about chasing the weight we were at twenty-five, nor is it about counting every calorie until eating becomes less enjoyable than filing in a tax return.

Instead, this newsletter is about giving our bodies the raw materials it needs to continue doing its job.

Think of it as servicing an engine.

An engine needs clean fuel, the correct oil and regular maintenance if it is going to remain reliable. Ignore those things for long enough, and eventually, performance begins to suffer.

Our bodies aren’t very different.

However, unlike our cars, the great thing about our bodies is that, given the chance, they can do an extraordinary job of repairing and maintaining themselves — provided we give them something sensible to work with.

The Forgotten Nutrient

If there is one nutrient that deserves a better public relations department, it’s protein.

When many people hear the word, they immediately picture bodybuilders drinking fluorescent shakes while admiring themselves in gym mirrors.

That’s rather unfortunate because protein has very little to do with becoming a bodybuilder.

As I discussed in a previous newsletter, one of the biggest challenges in later life is maintaining muscle. Our bodies naturally become less efficient at building and repairing muscle as we age, so we need to pay more attention to protein intake and strength training than we did when we were younger.

That doesn’t mean eating steak for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

It simply means making sure each meal contains a reasonable source of protein.

Eggs, fish, chicken, yoghurt, beans, lentils, nuts, and dairy products all help provide the building blocks our muscles need.

The irony is that many retirees gradually eat less protein just at the stage of life when it becomes more important. And our muscles have not been informed of this policy change.

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Fibre: The Quiet Achiever

If protein is the celebrity of the nutrition world, fibre is the dependable supporting actor who quietly keeps everything running behind the scenes.

Fibre rarely makes newspaper headlines.

Nobody boasts about eating an exciting bowl of oats.

Yet, fibre plays a remarkable number of roles.

Fibre helps keep the digestive system working properly, supports the billions of friendly bacteria living in our gut, helps us feel fuller for longer so we can avoid those midmorning biscuits and cake, and can even contribute to better heart health.

Most of us probably don’t eat enough fibre.

The good news is that increasing fibre rarely requires a complete dietary revolution. It just needs a few more vegetables, some fruit, wholegrain bread instead of white, plus beans, lentils, and oats appearing a little more often on our menu.

Small changes soon become habits.

Don’t Forget to Water the Engine

One thing that becomes increasingly common as we get older is forgetting to drink. And I don’t mean alcohol, I mean water.

Children seem permanently attached to their drink bottles.

Retirees often discover, sometime around mid-afternoon, that the only liquid they’ve consumed all day is two cups of tea and half a mug of coffee.

Our sense of thirst tends to become less reliable with age, which means we can become mildly dehydrated without really noticing. And the symptoms of dehydration are wonderfully unhelpful:

• Feeling tired.

• A slight headache.

• Poor concentration.

• Occasional dizziness.

Many of us assume we’re having an “off day” when, in reality, our body is quietly asking for a glass of water.

Tea and coffee certainly count towards our fluid intake, despite some persistent myths to the contrary. But plain water is still one of the simplest and cheapest ways of helping the body perform at its best.

There are also some added benefits to staying well-hydrated. Having plenty of water in our system can help with general digestion, drug metabolism, and the removal of harmful metabolites and toxins.

The 80/20 Retirement Rule

One thing I’ve learned over the years is that perfection is exhausting.

Life is too short to feel guilty every time somebody offers you a slice of Victoria sponge.

Retirement should still include birthday cakes, pub lunches, fish and chips by the seaside and the occasional ice cream on a warm afternoon.

Those moments are part of enjoying life. They are part of enjoying our retirement.

The trick is making the ‘naughty’ foods, our guilty pleasures, the exception rather than the rule.

If we eat sensibly most of the time, our bodies are surprisingly forgiving.

It’s rather like maintaining a car. One missed polish doesn’t matter very much. Ignore maintenance completely for five years, and you’ll soon notice the difference.

Healthy eating works in much the same way.

It’s what we do most of the time that matters.

Eat Like You’re Maintaining an Engine

The more I think about it, the more I like the engine analogy.

When I fill up my car with fuel, I don’t expect it to make the car look prettier.

I expect it to help the engine do its job reliably.

Food is much the same.

Every meal is an opportunity to provide the body with the fuel and raw materials it needs to repair muscles, maintain bones, support the immune system and keep everything working as smoothly as possible.

That doesn’t sound quite as exciting as chocolate cake, but fortunately, life and retirement allows room for both.

This Week’s Maintenance Task

This week, don’t count calories.

Instead, ask yourself three simple questions:

1. Did I eat enough protein today?

2. Did I eat enough fibre?

3. Did I drink enough water?

If you can answer “yes” to those most days, you’re probably doing far better than you think.

After all, retirement isn’t about eating perfectly. It’s about fuelling the remarkable machine that has carried us this far and, with a little care and attention, may carry us for many more enjoyable years to come.

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Next week

Next week in issue 269 (120), I look at Sleep – The Overnight Service.

Thanks

Thanks for taking the time to read this newsletter, and please don’t hesitate to share it with your friends or on social media using the buttons below.

Share

If you want to say ‘thanks’ to the newsletter, why not buy me a cup of tea?

Until next time,

Nick

PS: If you would like to contribute something to the newsletter — a story, advice, or anything else — please get in touch.

Please note that the above is not nutrition advice. You should speak to your doctor or a nutritionalist before making any changes to your dietary habits.

Welcome

Welcome to issue 267 (118) — can you still reach your socks? Or viewed another way — how bendy are you?

And in my case, the answer is — not as bendy as I used to be.

Please note that the following is not medical advice, and you should speak to your doctor before making any changes to your exercise and fitness routines, or before trying to bend yourself into the shape of a pretzel.

Flexibility – Can You Still Reach Your Socks?

A few mornings ago, I found myself engaged in a surprisingly challenging activity.

I was trying to put on my socks.

Now, hopefully, you assume this is a straightforward process. You sit down, bend forward, grab the sock and put it on your foot. The whole thing takes about ten seconds and requires no particular planning.

My retirement, however, has introduced a few additional variables. Actually, it’s not fair to blame it on retirement, as it has more to do with the general passing of time.

There is the question of whether the foot can still be reached comfortably. There is the issue of balance, which we discussed in the previous newsletter. There is also the slight uncertainty about whether anything important might start creaking, clicking or protesting halfway through the manoeuvre.

As I eventually succeeded in getting both socks on without requiring emergency assistance, I found myself wondering whether this simple task might be telling me something important.

The ability to reach my socks turns out to be less about socks and more about flexibility.

And flexibility is one of those aspects of fitness that most of us completely ignore until we start losing it.

One of my friends lost his flexibility in his 40s. And I get the feeling I am heading in that direction and will soon be facing a sockless future.

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The Slow Shrinking of Our World

One of the interesting things about reduced flexibility is that it rarely arrives dramatically.

Nobody wakes up one morning and discovers they have suddenly become stiff.

Instead, it creeps up gradually.

We stop bending down quite so easily. We become slightly less willing to kneel in the garden. Reaching something on a low shelf becomes mildly irritating. Looking over our shoulder while reversing the car requires a bit more effort than it used to. These are all signs. How many do you have?

Each individual change is small enough to dismiss. The problem is that these small changes accumulate.

Over time, the world starts to feel a little less accessible. Certain movements become awkward, so we avoid them. The less we perform those movements, the harder they become.

Before long, we discover that activities we once took for granted now require careful planning.

The change is almost imperceptible day to day, but eventually, we have less freedom of movement with our bodies.

What Flexibility Really Means

When most people hear the word “flexibility,” they picture yoga instructors folding themselves into shapes that appear incompatible with human anatomy. And this mental image tends to discourage the rest of us.

The good news is that flexibility in retirement has very little to do with touching our toes or impressing strangers on social media.

What really matters is mobility.

What we should be aiming for is being able to

• bend down to tie our shoelaces

• get in and out of our car comfortably (some grunts and groans are permitted)

• reach a high shelf

• bend down to reach that item at the back of the cupboard or fridge

• turn our head to check for traffic or to reverse into a tight parking spot

• still snake our way into tight spaces to do household chores and maintenance

All of these are the movements that matter.

Flexibility isn’t really about becoming more bendy.

It’s about maintaining the range of movement required for everyday life.

Interestingly (worryingly), about five years ago, long before I retired, I found that I had lost, or was losing, the ability to do most of the above. What was particularly noticeable was that I struggled to get out of my car after a long walk. My body would seize up. It would set. It got so bad that I spoke to my doctor. And it turned out I had an underlying medical condition. With the help of a prescription for a series of nasty, poorly designed drugs (the poor drug design is my professional opinion as a retired biochemist), with some shockingly bad side effects, I regained a lot of my flexibility.

So, the loss of flexibility can be an indicator of a medical condition and not just something we have to accept with old age.

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The Stretching Myth

For years, stretching was often presented as a kind of magical cure for almost everything.

Athletes stretched.

Fitness instructors stretched.

People who had no particular reason to stretch stretched anyway because everybody else seemed to be doing it.

More recently, however, stretching has developed something of an image problem. Some people now dismiss it entirely, as though flexibility no longer matters.

As usual, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Stretching alone will not transform our lives overnight. We are unlikely to wake up tomorrow feeling twenty years younger because we spent five minutes reaching for your toes.

On the other hand, regularly moving joints through their full range of motion can help maintain mobility and reduce stiffness.

The important point is that flexibility doesn’t require an elaborate stretching routine.

What matters is movement.

The body generally maintains the movements we continue to perform.

The movements we stop performing tend to disappear.

Use It or Lose It

Yes, we are back to this theme. And this is a common theme in body maintenance — use it or lose it.

As I have said before, the body is remarkably practical.

If we regularly walk, it helps maintain our ability to walk.

If we regularly challenge our balance, it helps maintain our balance.

The same principle applies to flexibility.

If we regularly bend, reach, twist and stretch, our body assumes these movements are important.

If we stop doing them, our bodies begin to reduce our capacity to perform them quietly.

This is one reason why active hobbies can be so valuable.

Gardening requires reaching, squatting, kneeling and twisting. Boating involves climbing, stretching, lifting and occasionally contorting yourself into positions that no physiotherapist would ever recommend.

If we think about it, even ordinary household tasks involve a surprising amount of movement.

The secret is not necessarily finding a dedicated flexibility programme. The secret is continuing to move your body in varied ways.

Independence in Disguise

One of the things I’ve noticed while writing this body maintenance series is that many aspects of fitness ultimately come down to the same thing.

Freedom.

Strength gives us freedom.

Balance gives us freedom.

And flexibility gives us freedom.

When flexibility declines, independence often declines with it.

Tasks become harder. Activities become more tiring. We begin avoiding certain movements because they’re uncomfortable. The world gradually becomes smaller.

Conversely, maintaining flexibility helps preserve options.

Flexibility allows us to continue gardening, travelling, boating, walking and generally getting on with life without constantly having to think about how our body is going to cope.

That is why flexibility matters.

Not because we’re trying to become yoga instructors.

But because we want to continue living life on our terms.

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A Few Practical Ideas

The encouraging news is that improving mobility doesn’t require a gym membership or expensive equipment.

Simple movements performed regularly can make a significant difference.

Taking a few moments each day to gently reach overhead, turn our head from side to side, bend down toward our knees or ankles, and move our shoulders through their full range of motion can help remind the body that these movements are still required.

Walking is surprisingly useful too, particularly when it includes uneven ground, slopes, and changes in direction.

Activities such as yoga, Pilates and Tai Chi can also help, but so can gardening, housework and many of the jobs that naturally arise during everyday life.

The body is not particularly concerned about where the movement comes from.

It simply responds to being used.

This Week’s Maintenance Task

This week, pay attention to the movements you avoid.

Is there something you’ve stopped doing because it feels stiff or awkward, such as bending down to pick something up, turning your head fully when reversing the car or kneeling in the garden?

Don’t force anything or attempt to recreate your flexibility from thirty years ago. Instead, gently explore the movement and see what feels possible.

And while you’re at it, try the sock test.

If putting on your socks still feels easy, celebrate quietly. If it feels a little harder than it once did, consider it useful feedback.

After all, body maintenance isn’t about becoming younger. It’s about making sure that ten years from now, we’re still able to put our socks on without needing a risk assessment.

Next week

Next week in issue 268 (119), I look at the fuel we need for our retirement journey. That is, it’s time to think about nutrition.

Thanks

Thanks for taking the time to read this newsletter, and please don’t hesitate to share it with your friends or on social media using the buttons below.

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If you want to say ‘thanks’ to the newsletter, why not buy me a cup of tea?

Until next time,

Nick

PS: If you would like to contribute something to the newsletter — a story, advice, or anything else — please get in touch.

Please note that the above is not medical advice, and you should speak to your doctor before making any changes to your exercise habits.

Welcome

Welcome to issue 266 (1177) — the importance of balance — the fifth newsletter in my body maintenance series.

Please note that the following is not medical advice; you should speak to your doctor before making any changes to your exercise or fitness routine.

Balance – The Skill Nobody Thinks About

A few days ago, I found myself standing on one leg in the bathroom.

This was not part of a carefully planned fitness programme. Nor was I auditioning for a ballet company. I was simply trying to put on a sock.

As many retirees know, putting on socks can become surprisingly complicated with age.

What was once a simple task can gradually evolve into a balancing act worthy of an Olympic gymnast. One foot leaves the floor, the body begins to wobble slightly, and suddenly, you’re reaching for a nearby chair or leaning against the wall while trying to maintain an appearance of dignity.

I managed it in the end, although it was a closer-run thing than I would care to admit.

The incident got me thinking about balance.

It’s one of those abilities we rarely think about when it works properly. Like breathing, hearing or remembering where we left our glasses, balance tends to attract attention only when it starts to let us down.

Yet, balance may be one of the most important skills we possess in later life.

The Problem Nobody Plans For

When most people think about getting older, they worry about things like arthritis, memory problems or declining eyesight, or the pension running out.

Very few people spend much time worrying about falling over.

Unfortunately, our bodies don’t always share our priorities.

Falls are one of the most common causes of injury in older adults. A simple stumble that would have been little more than an embarrassment at twenty-five can become a serious event at seventy-five.

Part of the problem is that falls often arrive without warning. Nobody puts a reminder in their diary saying, “Trip over the edge of the rug at 2.30 on Thursday afternoon.”

Most falls occur during entirely ordinary activities, such as:

• walking to the shops

• stepping off a kerb

• reaching for something in a cupboard

• getting out of bed in the middle of the night

The problem is, most of us only start thinking about balance after a fall.

It’s rather like deciding to learn how to swim halfway through a shipwreck.

The Invisible Skill

One reason balance is so frequently overlooked is that it feels automatic.

We don’t consciously instruct dozens of muscles to make tiny adjustments every second while we stand, walk or climb stairs. Our body just gets on with the job.

Behind the scenes, however, an astonishing amount of work is taking place.

Our eyes are providing information about our surroundings.

Our inner ear is monitoring movement and position.

Muscles and joints constantly report the positions of various parts of our body.

And our brain takes all this information and somehow keeps us upright. When you think about it, the process is amazing.

Most of the time, we do a remarkable job of staying upright.

The trouble is that balance, like strength, follows the familiar “use it or lose it” principle.

If we stop challenging our balance, our balance gradually deteriorates.

The encouraging news is that the opposite is also true. We can improve and recover our balance.

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Balance Is a Skill

This is perhaps the most important point of this newsletter.

Many people assume balance is something we’re either born with or we aren’t.

In reality, balance behaves much more like a skill.

Think about riding a bicycle.

The first time you try it, staying upright feels impossible. Yet, after enough practice, it becomes second nature.

Balance works in much the same way. The body learns through repetition. Every time we challenge our balance, the nervous system becomes slightly better at responding.

That’s one reason active retirees often maintain excellent balance well into later life. Walking regularly, gardening, dancing, boating, skiing and many other activities constantly challenge the body’s ability to stay upright.

The body responds by becoming better at the task.

It’s not magic.

It’s practice.

Balance Needs Muscles

One of the biggest misconceptions about balance is that it’s entirely about the inner ear.

People often imagine that balance problems originate somewhere deep inside the head, as though the body contains a tiny spirit level that occasionally malfunctions.

While the inner ear certainly plays an important role, balance depends on much more than that.

It also depends on strength.

Think about what happens when we stumble.

Our body has only a fraction of a second to react. Muscles in our legs, hips, and trunk must engage immediately to prevent us from toppling over. If those muscles are weak, slow or poorly conditioned, recovery becomes much harder.

In many ways, balance and strength are partners. One without the other is less effective.

This is one reason why strength training was featured in the previous newsletter. Strong legs help us recover from slips and trips. Strong hips help keep us stable when walking. Strong core muscles help us stay upright when our centre of gravity shifts unexpectedly.

The phrase “core strength” is often associated with fitness enthusiasts demonstrating alarming exercises on social media. In reality, our core is simply the collection of muscles around our abdomen, back and pelvis that help stabilise our body.

Every time we stand, walk, climb stairs or get out of a chair, our core is quietly doing its job.

When these muscles are strong, balance becomes easier. When they are weak, maintaining stability requires much more effort.

The encouraging news is that everyday activities can improve both strength and balance at the same time. Walking, gardening, climbing stairs, carrying shopping, Tai Chi, yoga and many simple strength exercises all challenge the systems that keep us upright.

This is why body maintenance works best when viewed as a whole. Strength supports balance. Balance supports movement. Movement supports strength.

The various components are connected in ways that are easy to overlook until one of them starts to decline.

In the above, I particularly like the line:

“Strength supports balance. Balance supports movement. Movement supports strength.”

Because it ties together the previous newsletter on strength, the current newsletter on balance, and the upcoming newsletters on mobility and flexibility.

It also reinforces the idea that body maintenance is a connected system rather than a collection of separate health topics.

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The One-Leg Challenge

The one-leg challenge is one of the simplest balance tests you can perform, as it requires no equipment whatsoever.

Stand near a kitchen worktop or sturdy chair and try standing on one leg.

That’s it.

Nothing complicated.

The first thing most people discover is that this exercise is harder than expected.

The second thing they discover is that they immediately begin taking balance far more seriously.

You don’t need to stand there for minutes at a time pretending to be a flamingo. Even a few seconds can tell you quite a lot about your current balance.

If you wobble, that’s perfectly normal.

If you need to touch a chair for support, that’s perfectly normal, too.

The goal isn’t perfection. The goal is to challenge the system.

Over time, many people find that what felt difficult gradually becomes easier.

The body learns.

That’s what bodies do.

Slow Motion Exercise

Whenever balance is discussed, somebody eventually mentions Tai Chi or yoga.

For years, I assumed Tai Chi involved standing around very slowly while looking exceptionally calm.

Having learned a little more about it, I’ve realised there is rather more going on than that.

Tai Chi combines slow, controlled movements with balance, coordination and body awareness. It looks gentle, but it quietly challenges many of the systems that keep us upright.

Studies have shown that it can improve balance and reduce the risk of falls in older adults.

What appeals to many people is that it doesn’t involve jumping around, running marathons or pretending to enjoy burpees. It is an exercise designed around control rather than exhaustion. And for many retirees, that’s an attractive proposition.

Of course, Tai Chi isn’t the only option. Yoga, dancing, walking on uneven ground, gardening, and even negotiating lock gates on a narrowboat can all provide useful balance training. And my experience of balance training is with yoga.

About 20 years ago, while on a skiing holiday, I tried to dislocate my left hip. I still say it wasn’t a skiing accident, as it happened as I was heading to the car park after I had finished skiing for the day. And of course, this happened on day one of a ten-day trip.

Recovery was slow and painful, and I spent nearly two months hobbling around on crutches. When I finally stopped using the crutches, I found the left side of my body had significantly weakened. So, I spent the summer building up the strength on my left-hand side — or so I thought.

When I next went skiing in the following ski season, I found that my sense of balance had gone. I fell more. My left and right sides felt the same, but the left was definitely weaker.

The next summer, I took a series of yoga classes. They didn’t seem to do a lot. Day-to-day, I noticed nothing significantly different. But the next ski season, I found my balance had returned. I was skiing like my old self.

The important thing I learnt from this is that it isn’t which activity you choose. The important thing is giving your balance system something to do — Tai Chi or yoga. It’s going for something that specifically targets balance that helps.

A Boater’s and Skier’s Perspective

Regular readers will know I’m a boater (a narrowboater), and one thing boating teaches you very quickly is that, as in skiing, balance matters.

Towpaths are not always level. Lock sides can be uneven. Boat roofs are best avoided altogether unless necessary and approached with great caution.

Most boaters become surprisingly good at adapting to changing surfaces and awkward footing. The body learns to make constant small adjustments without us even noticing.

Skiing is slippery, fast, changeable, and unpredictable. You never know what the snow beneath your skis is going to do next.

In many ways, the challenges of boating and skiing are exactly what balance training is about.

It’s not preparing for some dramatic event.

It’s preparing for all the little moments that happen every day:

• stepping off a kerb

• walking across a wet path

• turning around quickly

• reaching for something on a shelf

The better our balance, the more confidently we move through the world. The safer we become.

This Week’s Maintenance Task

This week’s challenge is wonderfully simple, and I have already covered it above.

Stand near a sturdy support and try balancing on one leg for a few seconds each day.

That’s all.

If you feel steady, try increasing the time slightly.

If you wobble, congratulations. You’ve identified something worth practising.

Remember, the objective isn’t to become a circus performer.

The objective is to maintain the ability to move confidently and independently for as long as possible.

Because balance is one of those skills we rarely appreciate until the day we need it.

And preferably, that day never arrives.

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Next week

Next week in issue 267 (118), we’re focusing on flexibility, and I ask the all-important question: can you still reach your socks?

Thanks

Thanks for taking the time to read this newsletter. Please don’t hesitate to share it with your friends or on social media using the buttons below.

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If you want to say ‘thanks’ for the newsletter, why not buy me a cup of tea?

Until next time,

Nick

PS: If you would like to contribute something to the newsletter — a story, advice, or anything else — please get in touch.

Please note that the above is not medical advice, and you should speak to your doctor before making any changes to your exercise habits.

Welcome

Welcome to issue 265 (116). In this issue of my body maintenance series, I look at Strength – The Forgotten Fitness. And as I said in the subtitle, this is the one I always forget.

Please note that the following is not medical advice, and you should speak to your doctor before making any changes to your exercise or fitness routines.

Strength – The Forgotten Fitness

A few weeks ago, I found myself performing one of the more demanding athletic manoeuvres of modern retirement.

I stood up from a particularly low chair while holding a cup of tea in a saucer.

Now, years ago, I wouldn’t have thought that such a magnificent athletic feat would deserve a mention at all. In those days, standing up was as simple as standing up. To many retirees, however, rising gracefully from a low chair can occasionally involve careful planning, a slight rocking motion and a brief negotiation with the knees. And a range of strange noises.

Most of the time, I have no problems getting out of a chair — unless it is particularly low, as in the example above, when I have a cup of tea, in a saucer, in my hand (a mug of tea is usually OK).

Fortunately, on this particular occasion, I succeeded. The tea remained in the cup; nothing ended up in the saucer, I made no alarming creaking noise, and I managed to remain upright throughout the operation.

As I walked away, it occurred to me that this simple action probably tells me more about my fitness than many of the things I normally worry about.

Over the years, I have spent a great deal of time thinking about my weight and overall cardio fitness. But I have spent precious little time thinking about my strength. Yet strength may be one of the most important factors in determining how well we live in retirement.

(DO NOT TRY THIS ON YOUR OWN — make sure someone is with you. Another interesting test is getting up off the floor. Can you? But, DO NOT TRY THIS ON YOUR OWN, just in case you can’t!)

The Tyranny of the Bathroom Scales

For years, many of us have allowed a small device in the bathroom to determine whether we feel virtuous or guilty. I know I have.

We step onto the scales and await judgment.

If the number goes down, we congratulate ourselves. If it goes up, we immediately begin blaming biscuits, holidays or Christmas, even if Christmas happened several months ago.

The problem is that scales are rather limited instruments. They tell us how much we weigh; that’s it. They tell us very little about what makes up that weight. Is it all fat? Or is it muscle? The two “weights” are very different when it comes to our health.

Imagine two people of identical weight. One remains active and has maintained a reasonable amount of muscle. The other has gradually lost muscle over the years, replacing much of it with fat. The scales see no difference whatsoever, yet the difference in day-to-day capability would be enormous.

One person may think nothing of carrying shopping, climbing stairs or spending an afternoon gardening. The other may find the same tasks surprisingly demanding.

As we age, muscle becomes increasingly valuable. It isn’t there simply to make us look athletic. Muscle helps us move, maintain balance, recover from illness and continue doing all the things we enjoy. In many ways, muscle allows independence to continue long after retirement begins.

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The Muscle Thief Nobody Talks About

One reason strength matters so much is that we gradually lose it unless we make an effort to keep it.

Doctors, who always like to use big secret words for things, have a wonderfully intimidating word for this process: sarcopenia.

It sounds as though it should be either a Roman military formation or a minor character in a Shakespeare play. In reality, it simply means age-related muscle loss.

The important thing to understand is that sarcopenia is normal. It happens to all of us. The body becomes slightly less enthusiastic about maintaining muscle as we grow older.

However, normal does not mean unavoidable.

One of the most encouraging discoveries in recent research is that older muscles remain remarkably responsive. They may be a little slower to react than they once were, but they can still become stronger when challenged.

The body is actually quite sensible. If we continue asking our muscles to do useful work, it assumes they are still required and keeps them around. If we spend most of our time sitting down, it reaches the opposite conclusion and quietly begins reducing the workforce.

Unfortunately for us, our bodies are ruthlessly efficient. If it sees no reason to maintain equipment that never gets used, it stops maintaining it.

The Chair Test

The chair test I mentioned above is more important than it sounds.

Think about how often we get out of a chair during a typical day. We stand up from the breakfast table, from the sofa, from the car, from a bench, from a waiting room and from countless other chairs without giving it a second thought.

Yet, every one of those movements requires strength.

In fact, physiotherapists often use chair-rise tests because they provide a surprisingly good indication of lower-body strength and functional fitness. The ability to rise easily from a chair is closely linked to our independence.

After all, very few retirees spend their days lifting barbells in a gym. Most of us are far more interested in whether we can climb stairs, carry shopping, go for a walk and get up from the floor if we accidentally (or deliberately) end up there.

In my case, I also want to be able to handle heavy lock gates and lift bridges, and haul a mooring rope around with a big, heavy, narrowboat on the other end.

Real-life strength is not about impressive displays of power.

It’s about making everyday life feel easy.

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Strength Training Without the Lycra

I was going to start this section by saying I have never owned any Lycra, but I have just realised that is not true. I own a pair of padded Lycra cycling shorts, not for cycling, but for padding on a six-day horse trek I once did.

Anyway, the phrase “strength training” often creates the entirely wrong impression.

Many people immediately picture gyms filled with mirrors, loud music and individuals who appear capable of lifting a family hatchback.

Personally, I have nothing against gyms, but I don’t like them. If you enjoy them, that’s wonderful.

However, maintaining strength in retirement does not require a gym membership, a personal trainer or a cupboard full of protein powder.

The body doesn’t really care where the work comes from, and any of the following will do the job:

• climbing stairs

• carrying shopping

• gardening

• cleaning the house

• DIY

And in my case, owning and using a narrowboat. In fact, one reason I suspect many boaters remain reasonably fit is that boats are endlessly demanding. There are ropes to pull, lock gates to open, fuel cans to move and maintenance jobs to tackle. What appears to be a hobby is often exercise in disguise.

The same applies to gardening. Digging, lifting, carrying, stretching and kneeling may not feel like a formal workout, but the muscles involved rarely know the difference. And a lot of that also applies to housework and DIY.

The secret isn’t finding the perfect exercise programme. The secret is to keep asking your muscles to do useful work and to find a sneaky, enjoyable way to get some exercise every day.

Strength Is Really About Freedom

The older I get, the more I think strength is about something much bigger than muscles.

It’s about freedom.

Strength allows us to remain independent. It allows us to continue doing the things that make retirement enjoyable. It allows us to travel, explore, garden, boat, walk and generally get on with life without constantly needing assistance.

When people lose strength, they often lose options. Distances shorten, activities grow harder, and adventures become less appealing. The world gradually shrinks.

Maintaining strength helps keep the world open.

That’s why I think strength is the forgotten fitness. We obsess over weight and cardio fitness because it is easy to measure.

Strength is harder to see, yet it may be far more important.

After all, nobody ever stood at the top of a flight of stairs and thought, “I wish I weighed three pounds less.”

What they usually think is, “I’m glad I can still do this.”

This Week’s Maintenance Task

This week, pay attention to how easily you stand up from a chair.

Don’t worry about timing yourself or turning it into a competition. Simply notice how it feels.

Then choose one activity that challenges your muscles a little more than usual. It might be walking up stairs, carrying shopping, doing a bit of gardening or spending an hour tackling one of those jobs you’ve been avoiding.

Nothing dramatic is required.

Just remind your muscles that retirement is not a redundancy programme.

They still have an important job to do.

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Next week

Next week, in issue 266 (117), I look at another often-overlooked area of retiree body maintenance — balance. And I’m not talking about what is in our retirement accounts, but the importance of being able to maintain our bodies in an upright position.

Thanks

Thanks for taking the time to read this newsletter, and please don’t hesitate to share it with your friends or on social media using the buttons below.

Share

If you want to say ‘thanks’ for the newsletter, why not buy me a cup of tea?

Until next time,

Nick

PS: If you would like to contribute something for the newsletter — a story, advice, or anything else — please get in touch.

Please note that the above is not medical advice, and you should speak to your doctor before making any changes to your exercise habits.

Welcome

Welcome to issue 264 (115) — Move It or Lose It.

Please note that the following is not medical advice, and you should speak to your doctor before making any changes to your exercise routine.

Move It or Lose It

I recently conducted a highly scientific experiment. (If you are a regular reader of this newsletter, then you will know that before I retired, I was a scientist, and so I feel professionally obligated to point out that this was not a real experiment. There were no controls. But I have run the experiment multiple times and got the same results.)

The experiment involved spending most of an afternoon sitting in a comfortable chair, watching television, and drinking tea.

I should point out that this wasn’t initially planned research. It simply happened. One programme led to another, and then there was a documentary I wanted to see. Before I knew it, several hours had disappeared.

When I eventually decided it was time to stand up, I made a disturbing discovery. I appeared to have aged. Significantly.

Not dramatically, of course. I hadn’t suddenly transformed into an ancient relic. Nevertheless, I definitely didn’t stand up with the same ease with which I had sat down.

My knees were reluctant to cooperate, my back felt surprisingly stiff, and the first few steps resembled someone learning to walk for the very first time. (Worryingly, I’m like that most mornings…)

The curious thing was that after five minutes of moving around, everything returned to normal. Or at least to my version of normal.

That little episode got me thinking about one of the great paradoxes of retirement. We spend years looking forward to having more free time, only to discover that, if we’re not careful, we can end up spending much of it sitting.

The Body’s Cost-Cutting Programme

As a biomedical scientist, I appreciate that the human body is a remarkable piece of engineering, but it does have one annoying characteristic. It likes efficiency.

If you use a particular muscle regularly, your body assumes that muscle is important and invests resources in maintaining it. If you stop using it, however, the body reaches a different conclusion. Apparently, those muscles are no longer required, so our body begins quietly reducing the maintenance budget.

From the body’s perspective and evolution, this makes perfect sense. Why waste valuable energy maintaining strength, flexibility, and balance if they are never called upon?

The trouble is that the process happens so gradually that we barely notice it. We don’t suddenly wake up one morning weaker than we were the day before. Instead, we move a little less, sit a little more and gradually become accustomed to doing less than we once did.

Then one day, we find ourselves carrying a heavy shopping bag and wondering why it feels considerably heavier than it did a few years ago.

And I think that one of the cruellest aspects of inactivity is that it tends to feed on itself. The less we move, the less we feel like moving. The less we feel like moving, the less we move. It’s a beautifully designed downward spiral.

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Walking: The Underrated Wonder Drug

The good news, for me, is that the solution doesn’t necessarily involve expensive equipment, complicated exercise programmes or joining a gym.

In fact, one of the most effective forms of exercise is something most of us learned to do before we could talk.

Walking.

And I know that for a lot of fellow retirees, cycling, yoga and light running also work.

If a pharmaceutical company could produce a tablet that:

• lowered blood pressure

• improved cardiovascular health

• helped maintain muscle strength

• improved balance

• reduced stress

• improved sleep

• boosted mental wellbeing

it would become one of the most successful products in medical history.

Instead, to get all the above benefits, we just need to go for a walk.

The good news is nobody can patent it. No one can make money from it, other than from selling us the latest, most expensive hiking gear that most of us will never need.

One of the things I enjoy most about walking is that it rarely feels like exercise. A stroll along a footpath by a river or through a local wood, for example, doesn’t feel remotely medical. It feels like a pleasant way to spend an hour. During that time, I might see wildlife, watch boats negotiating a lock, exchange a few words with another walker or simply enjoy the peace and quiet, and the views.

Yet all the while my body is quietly benefiting from the experience. And it’s double value — it’s good for our mental and physical health.

Walking is one of those rare activities that seems to improve almost everything while requiring very little equipment beyond a comfortable pair of shoes and a sense of direction.

And, if you can add a dog to the walk, it can be even more fun — although stress levels might be slightly raised depending on how well the dog behaves.

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The Gym Isn’t Mandatory

I will say this up front — I don’t like gyms. I have joined gyms, and I’ve tried going to gyms. I have taken classes at gyms. And I have found that gyms just don’t work for me.

Whenever the subject of exercise comes up, many people immediately picture a gym.

Personally, I have nothing against gyms; I just don’t like them. They clearly work very well for many people. However, some gyms seem to contain an alarming number of mirrors, loud music and individuals who appear capable of lifting household appliances with one hand. They are not the place for me, but for some retirees, the atmosphere in a gym is highly motivating.

The encouraging thing is that the body doesn’t particularly care where movement takes place. It doesn’t keep a record and award bonus points for exercising in a building full of treadmills.

The body simply responds to movement.

A brisk walk, a cycle ride, an afternoon of gardening, yoga, or several hours spent working on a boat or doing household DIY all require muscles, balance, coordination, and energy. As far as the body is concerned, movement is movement. And that is good news because it means exercise doesn’t have to be a separate activity squeezed awkwardly into our day. Often, it can simply be part of how we choose to live.

Exercise Disguised as a Hobby

Now this is sneaky, and is something I have done. I have disguised exercise as a hobby.

One of the things I have noticed since buying my narrowboat, the Grey Wagtail, is that boating involves a surprising amount of physical activity.

Nobody advertises this when you buy the boat.

The sales brochure doesn’t say, “Congratulations, you have just acquired a floating exercise programme.” Or, “Congratulations, you have just acquired a floating money pit.”

Yet boating involves walking, operating manual locks and lift bridges, handling ropes, climbing on and off boats, carrying equipment and tackling an endless list of maintenance jobs.

Some days, I finish feeling pleasantly tired without ever having considered myself to be exercising.

For many people, gardening works much the same way. Many people describe it as a relaxing hobby, which is true right up until the point where you’ve spent three hours digging, lifting, stretching, kneeling and carrying things around the garden. For me, gardening has never worked. I don’t find it enjoyable.

The best forms of exercise are often the ones we enjoy so much that we don’t think of them as exercise at all, such as going out for a nice walk or bike ride.

And that’s the secret. Find that thing that works for you.

Every Little Bit Counts

One of the biggest misconceptions about fitness is that it only counts if it leaves us exhausted.

Many people seem to believe that unless they’re sweating heavily while wearing specialised sports clothing, they haven’t exercised properly.

Fortunately, that’s nonsense.

Small amounts of movement accumulated throughout the day can make a surprisingly large difference. Walking or cycling to the shops instead of taking the car, taking the stairs instead of the lift, working in the garden rather than paying someone to do the work, cleaning the house, or simply making a point of getting up and moving around regularly all contribute to keeping the machinery in working order.

The body isn’t demanding perfection. It isn’t expecting us to train for the Olympics.

What it does seem to expect is that we continue using it.

And perhaps that’s the real lesson here.

Retirement gives us freedom, but with that freedom comes responsibility. If we want to remain active, independent, and able to do the things we enjoy, we need to keep moving.

Not because we’re trying to become elite athletes.

Not because somebody told us we should.

But because the body operates according to a very simple principle.

If you use it, it stays useful.

If you don’t use it, it starts making strange noises when you stand up from a chair.

This Week’s Maintenance Task

This week, don’t think about exercise. Think about movement.

Take a walk along a footpath or in a local wood or a park. Spend an hour in the garden. For a short journey, leave the car at home. Find an excuse to move a little more than usual.

Nothing heroic is required.

Just remind your body that retirement is not the same thing as permanent parking.

Go on, give it a go. But don’t overdo it.

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Next week

Next week in issue 265 (116), Strength – The Forgotten Fitness. Why strength training should be part of your fitness plan.

Thanks

Thanks for taking the time to read this newsletter, and please don’t hesitate to share it with your friends or on social media using the buttons below.

Share

If you want to say ‘thanks’ for the newsletter, why not buy me a cup of tea?

Until next time,

Nick

PS: If you would like to contribute something to the newsletter — a story, advice, or anything else — please get in touch.

Please note that the above is not medical advice, and you should speak to your doctor before making any changes to your exercise habits.

Welcome

Welcome to issue 263 (114) — the start of our body maintenance journey.

This week, I start with the bad news — our warranty has expired — and ask what we can do to help maintain our bodies for a long, healthy retirement.

Please note: This is not medical advice. It is based on what I have read and what I do.

Your Warranty Has Expired

One of my unexpected discoveries of retirement was that nobody really talks about “body maintenance”.

There is plenty of advice about pensions, investments, downsizing, travel plans and how to fill your newly acquired free time.

There are endless articles about retirement finances and countless discussions about whether you should retire early, late, or not at all.

What nobody seems particularly keen to discuss is the rather inconvenient fact that retirement arrives at the same time as many of the body’s original parts start showing signs of wear and tear.

The knees creak.

The back complains.

The eyes require stronger glasses. (Or we find our arms have mysteriously shortened.)

Energy levels drop.

And getting out of a chair sometimes involves sound effects that would not be out of place in a low-budget horror film.

Now, before anyone accuses me of being negative, let me be clear. Growing older beats the alternative — and we all know the alternative I’m talking about. I am delighted to still be here. But I have noticed that my body now requires rather more maintenance than it did when I was twenty-five. And that got me thinking.

Perhaps retirement isn’t just about managing our finances and time.

Perhaps it’s also about managing the vehicle that will carry us through the next twenty or thirty years?

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The End of the Warranty Period

When I was younger, I treated my body with a level of casual neglect that would horrify me today.

I could stay up late, survive on very little sleep, eat whatever happened to be available and spend long periods sitting at a desk.

My body tolerated this behaviour with remarkable patience. Looking back, it’s almost as though it was saying, “Carry on. You’ll understand and regret it later.”

Well, that time has arrived.

These days, if I have a poor night’s sleep, I notice it. If I spend too much time sitting, my back (and my hips) notice it. If I spend a whole day working on the boat or in the garden, my knees (and back) are kind enough to provide detailed feedback the following morning.

Nothing dramatic has happened. There has been no sudden collapse in functionality. It’s simply that the warranty period appears to have expired.

Ageing or Neglect?

One of the things I find fascinating is how often we blame everything on ageing.

“I’m slowing down because I’m getting older.”

“My balance isn’t what it was because I’m getting older.”

“I’m not as strong as I used to be because I’m getting older.”

Sometimes that’s true.

But not always.

There is an important difference between ageing and neglect.

A twenty-year-old car will never perform exactly like a brand-new one. That’s ageing.

A twenty-year-old car that hasn’t been serviced in years, has flat tyres and is running on dirty oil is suffering from neglect. And it certainly won’t perform as well as a new car, or even a twenty-year-old car that has been looked after.

The same principle applies to us.

Some changes are unavoidable. None of us are going to look, move or recover exactly as we did at twenty-five. But many of the things we assume are simply part of old age are actually related to inactivity, poor sleep, poor diet or simply not paying enough attention to our health. We still think we can abuse our bodies as we did in our twenties, and the sad truth is that we can’t.

The problem is that neglect creeps up on us.

We don’t wake up one morning unable to touch our toes. We stopped touching our toes for a few years, and we lost the ability to do so. That’s neglect.

We don’t suddenly lose strength overnight. We just become a little less active each year. And our strength fades.

The changes happen so gradually that they can be difficult to spot until one day we realise that something that used to be easy now requires planning, determination, and perhaps a cup of tea and a lie-down afterwards.

Retirement Is Not the Beginning of the End

One thing that irritates me is the way retirement is portrayed in some parts of society.

Some people think retirement marks the beginning of a long, gentle decline towards an armchair and daytime television.

Personally, I think that’s nonsense.

Most people retire with a great deal of life still ahead of them. There are places to visit, hobbies to pursue, projects to complete, and adventures still waiting to happen.

When I retired, I didn’t spend my days sitting quietly contemplating my advancing years. Instead, I bought a narrowboat, and with hindsight, I’m not entirely sure whether that was the restful retirement strategy people would normally recommend. But it works for me. It keeps me active and busy (and poor — boats are a money pit).

The point is that retirement isn’t the end of the story. For many of us, it’s simply the start of a different, new and exciting chapter.

The challenge is ensuring our bodies are capable of joining us on the journey.

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Servicing the Vehicle

As many of you may not know, I spend a fair amount of time looking after my narrowboat, the Grey Wagtail.

With the boat, I have been busy painting, polishing, repairing, maintaining it, cruising, and fixing problems before they become expensive. I even occasionally get in a little relaxation.

The boat has kept me busy, engaged and active. I have found a sneaky way to maintain my body without going to the gym.

The boat is also a good example of the importance of care and maintenance in keeping something running.

At least that’s the theory.

Nobody expects a boat to look after itself.

The same is true of a car. If you want a vehicle to remain reliable for decades, you have to maintain it. You change the oil. You investigate strange noises. You pay attention when warning lights appear.

Sadly, many of us are far more diligent about servicing our vehicles than we are about servicing and maintaining ourselves.

We postponed the exercise until next week.

We promise to improve our diet after Christmas. And after Christmas, we decided Easter seems more realistic.

Then summer arrives, and we decide to wait until autumn.

Before we know it, several years have gone by.

The truth is that body maintenance doesn’t require perfection. Most of us aren’t training for the Olympics (well, I’m not). We want to remain active, independent, and able to do the things we enjoy.

A New Series

This newsletter is the second in a new series I’m calling Body Maintenance.

In the coming newsletters, I’m going to explore some of the practical steps I take to keep my body (hopefully) running smoothly.

I’ll look at movement, strength, balance, flexibility, nutrition, sleep, and recovery.

There won’t be any miracle cures.

There won’t be any promises to make us look and function like we’re 25 again. If I had discovered a reliable way of doing that, I wouldn’t be writing retirement newsletters. I’d be off spending the millions I had made from my miracle cure.

Instead, the focus will be on maintaining independence, preserving opportunities and giving ourselves the best chance of enjoying whatever adventures retirement still has in store.

After all, retirement is not the beginning of the end. It’s simply a stage of life where regular maintenance becomes a very good investment.

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This Week’s Maintenance Task

I asked you to do this last week, but I feel it’s important, so I’m going to ask again.

Take a moment to think about what you would like your body to be still capable of doing ten years from now. Some examples, to help you get started, are:

• being still able to walk several miles and go on long hikes

• travelling independently

• still being able to do physically demanding projects, such as gardening, all afternoon

• keeping up with energetic grandchildren

Write down three things.

Those goals are your destination. Your intentions.

The purpose of body maintenance is to help ensure the vehicle gets us there.

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Next week

Next week, in issue 264 (115), I will look at moving it or losing it — the importance of staying active in retirement.

Thanks

Thanks for taking the time to read this newsletter, and please don’t hesitate to share it with your friends or on social media using the buttons below.

If you want to say ‘thanks’ for the newsletter, why not buy me a cup of tea?

Until next time,

Nick

PS: If you would like to contribute something to the newsletter — a story, advice, or anything else — please get in touch.

Please note: The above is not medical advice.

Welcome

Welcome to issue 262 (113), the start of a series of newsletters on the importance of what I call “body maintenance” in retirement.

First, a disclaimer — I am not a medical doctor, and what I am writing about in this series of newsletters on body maintenance is NOT medical advice. What I am writing about is based on what I think and do to help maintain my general health and fitness in retirement. What I do is based on what I have read. I do hold a PhD in biochemistry, so I do take a scientific approach to these matters.

A Retirement Surprise

One of my biggest surprises in retirement was discovering just how much time I now had available to fill.

For decades, my life was governed by alarm clocks, meetings, deadlines, commutes and countless other commitments. Then, one day, much of that disappeared.

At first, retirement felt wonderfully liberating. Every day felt like a Saturday. There were places to visit, hobbies to pursue, friends to see, books to read and things to do. I could finally get on with all the things I had been putting off for years.

But after the initial excitement settled, I discovered an uncomfortable truth.

All my wonderful retirement plans depend upon one thing.

My body…. And its ability to be able to do all the things I wanted to do.

The Vehicle That Carries Us Through Retirement

If someone offered me a brand-new car and told me it had to last for the rest of my life, I would probably take excellent care of it.

I would:

• service it regularly

• check the oil

• check the water

• keep the tyres inflated

• pay attention to any strange noises before they become expensive problems

Yet many of us are far less diligent about maintaining the body that carries us through life.

Perhaps that’s because our bodies seem to work automatically. We don’t notice them very much until something starts creaking, squeaking or refusing to cooperate.

We tend to ignore our bodies until they go wrong. At which point we realise the warranty expired quite some time ago, and the fix is neither easy nor even possible.

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Retirement Does Not Equal Old Age

One of the themes I’ve explored before is whether retirement actually means we’re old — I don’t think it does.

Most people retire with decades of life still ahead of them. Many retirees are healthier, more active and more energetic than people twenty years younger who are struggling with stress, poor sleep and unhealthy lifestyles.

Retirement is not the end of the journey.

It’s simply a different stage of the journey.

The challenge is making sure our bodies remain capable travelling companions. Our bodies are worth looking after, and we shouldn’t neglect them.

The Cost of Neglect

As we age, our bodies become slightly less forgiving.

If we stop moving, muscles shrink.

If we stop challenging our balance, balance deteriorates.

If we gain excess weight, everyday activities become harder.

If we don’t recover properly from illness, we may never quite regain our previous level of fitness.

Even if we keep our diet unchanged and exercise levels the same, we gain weight. To me, that one seems particularly unfair.

None of this happens overnight.

It’s usually the result of hundreds of small decisions accumulating over many years.

The good news is that the opposite is also true. That is, a few small positive actions can also accumulate. These small actions can be as simple as:

• doing some short walks

• doing a few strength exercises

• getting a better night’s sleep

• eating a little more protein

• doing a little less sitting

Individually, they seem insignificant, but over the years, they can transform the quality of our retirement.

Independence Is the Real Goal

When I read about healthy ageing, I often find the articles focus on living longer.

Personally, I’m not convinced that’s the most important objective. I think it’s more about quality than quantity.

For me, long term, it’s about maintaining independence:

• being able to climb stairs

• carry shopping

• get out of a chair without assistance

But in the short term, it’s about getting the retirement I want:

• going on the long walks I want to do

• travelling when and where I would like to go

• continuing to enjoy my hobbies and adventures

Whether our dream retirement involves cruising along canals, travelling the world, gardening, golf, volunteering or simply playing with grandchildren, independence is what makes all those things possible.

Introducing the Body Maintenance Series

Over the next few weeks, I’d like to explore what I call “body maintenance.”

It’s not going to be anything extreme. There will be no miracle supplements or cures. No punishing exercise regimes. No expectations that we’ll all be running marathons by Christmas.

Instead, I’m going to look at practical, sensible ways I keep my machinery running smoothly.

What I hope to cover will include:

• Movement and exercise

• Strength and muscle loss

• Balance and preventing falls

• Flexibility and mobility

• Nutrition and protein

• Sleep and recovery

• Weight management

• Health checks and screening

• Building resilience after illness

I will be the first to admit I don’t have all the answers, and that I will get some things wrong, but that will give you the chance to point me in the right direction in the comments. I very much want this to be a conversation.

What I am suggesting is that we create a maintenance manual for the most important piece of equipment we’ll ever own. The manual won’t be a “one size fits all” but an individual manual. That is, we cherry-pick what we think will work for us.

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This Week’s Maintenance Task

Take five minutes to ask yourself one simple question:

“What do I want my body to be still able to do in ten years?”

Write down three things.

Perhaps it’s climbing hills.

Travelling independently.

Playing with grandchildren.

Gardening all afternoon.

Those goals matter because they provide a reason to look after ourselves today.

After all, body maintenance isn’t really about adding years to life. It’s about adding life to years.

Next week

Next week, in issue 263 (114), I will start looking at what we can do to help maintain our bodies for a long, healthy retirement now that our warranty has expired. Why not join me?

Thanks

Thanks for taking the time to read this newsletter, and please don’t hesitate to share it with your friends or on social media using the buttons below.

If you want to say ‘thanks’ for the newsletter, why not buy me a cup of tea?

Until next time,

Nick

PS: If you would like to contribute something to the newsletter — a story, advice, or anything else — please get in touch.

Please note: The above is not medical advice.

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Welcome

Welcome to issue 261 (112) — Ill health and old age — and this week I ask: does ill health make us age more quickly?

When we were young!

There was a time when bouncing back from illness felt almost automatic. And worryingly, it doesn’t seem too long ago.

I would catch a cold, spend a dramatic afternoon under a blanket watching daytime television, and declare myself “at death’s door” (particularly if it was the dreaded man flu), and then three days later, I would be perfectly fine again. Back to normal. Back to a full life.

But somewhere along the line, something changed.

These days, illness doesn’t just visit. It redecorates and seems to rearrange all the furniture.

Now, I don’t recover from an infection or an ailment so much as negotiate a long-term settlement with it. I emerge from a chest infection six weeks later, saying things like: “I’m almost over it…” Which is retirement code for: “I can now walk to the kettle without needing a sit-down.”

When Illness Ages Us Overnight

I’ve started to notice that ill health has a remarkable ability to age me ahead of schedule. Not biologically perhaps — at least not officially — but functionally. One illness can suddenly make me behave as though I were twenty years older.

A bad back turns me into someone who studies chairs before sitting down.

Dodgy knees make me inspect staircases like a mountaineer looking for the easiest route up Everest.

One afternoon of gardening or DIY can require a recovery strategy typically reserved for elite athletes.

And let’s not even discuss the noise I now have to make getting up and down from chairs.

Somewhere in my middle age, standing up or sitting down quietly became impossible. Every movement now requires a soundtrack.

“Ooof.”

“Aaah.”

Occasionally, I make a noise, and I’m not even sure what part of me hurts.

The Great Shrinking of Life

Ill health also changes how I think about activities. Before I retired, I imagined retirement as wonderfully free and adventurous. Long canal cruises. Travel. New hobbies. Spontaneous days out. The sort of thing you see in a retirement brochure, where attractive silver-haired couples laugh while drinking wine beside a lake at sunset.

In reality, I have found my retirement increasingly revolves around energy management.

I stop asking: “What shall I do today?”

And start asking: “What have I got the energy for?”

Particularly if I am recovering from a nasty case of man-flu.

And that’s the problem, one of the cruellest parts of illness is that we rarely bounce fully back to our previous level. That is, there is often a subtle ratcheting effect to ageing. Every significant illness or injury seems to lower the ceiling slightly. That lowering may be, in part, a loss of confidence, or a subtle change in our energy reserves or mobility, but it is a lowering.

I have noticed these changes in strange ways. I no longer fancy driving long distances for the fun of it (I used to). Or the idea of an evening out suddenly feels exhausting. Carrying shopping bags now feels like an Olympic event. Small changes, but these changes add up. And even if I recover from an illness or injury… I don’t feel you have fully recovered.

The world becomes a little smaller after each setback.

Why Don’t We Bounce Back Like We Used To?

Part of it is simply biology.

As we age, recovery becomes slower. Muscles weaken more quickly during periods of inactivity. Sleep becomes less restorative. Illnesses that younger people shrug off can flatten us for weeks.

And there’s another uncomfortable truth: many of us become less physically resilient without even noticing.

Modern life doesn’t help as it quietly trains us into fragility.

• Cars instead of walking.

• Chairs instead of movement.

• Screens instead of activity.

At some point, bending down to tie your shoelaces starts to feel like a flexibility assessment.

Our bodies like regular use. If we stop challenging it, it becomes alarmingly efficient at becoming less capable.

Which feels rather unfair, really.

Can We Improve Our Ability To Bounce Back?

I think we can.

The good news is that resilience is not entirely fixed. While none of us can turn back into a twenty-five-year-old, there is good evidence that we can improve our ability to recover and maintain energy.

Unfortunately, almost all the advice sounds suspiciously healthy.

Exercise helps enormously, particularly strength and balance work. It turns out muscles are not merely decorative after all. They are essentially a retirement savings account for old age. The more strength we maintain, the better we cope with illness, falls, and inactivity.

Walking matters too. Not power walking in fluorescent Lycra while aggressively overtaking pensioners. Just regular movement.

Sleep matters more than we like to admit.

Diet matters — a huge amount.

Social connection matters.

Even having hobbies and a purpose seems to improve resilience. Apparently, the body responds positively to having reasons to get out of bed beyond checking whether the bins need to be put out or whether we have left the bathroom light on overnight.

Perhaps most importantly, we need to avoid the temptation to stop doing things after illness.

And that is incredibly hard.

After a health scare, the instinct is to become cautious. To shrink life for safety. To preserve energy by avoiding effort.

But total inactivity creates its own downward spiral.

The less we do, the less capable we become. And the less capable we become, the older we feel.

The Unexpected Joy of Smaller Pleasures

All the above sounds rather gloomy, but oddly enough, I don’t think it has to be.

Retirement and getting old have taught me that life need not be enormous to be enjoyable.

In fact, one of my unexpected discoveries as I get older is that pleasure often becomes smaller, simpler, and cheaper.

A good cup of tea becomes an event.

A sunny afternoon feels like winning the lottery.

Getting through the week without needing to Google my symptoms counts as a tremendous success.

I’ve also become deeply grateful for all the body parts still functioning correctly, particularly when I look at how some of my contemporaries are faring. I find there is a quiet joy in discovering something doesn’t hurt today.

Growing Older… or Growing Wiser?

The truth is that ageing is probably not one dramatic event. It is an accumulation of tiny losses, adjustments, compromises, and adaptations. Ill health accelerates the process a bit.

It reminds us that ageing is less about the number of birthdays we’ve had and more about resilience — how quickly we recover, how much energy we retain, and how confidently we can still throw ourselves into life.

And yes, perhaps we do become older after illness.

But maybe we also become wiser.

More patient.

More appreciative.

More aware that energy, mobility, and health are not permanent possessions but temporary loans.

Over to you

What do you think? Is this all a load of nonsense? Does illness impact our ageing? Please let me know what you think in the comments.

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Next week

Next week in issue 262 (113), I’m going to start a series of newsletters on what I call “body maintenance”. What can we do to slow the ageing process?

Thanks

Thanks for taking the time to read this newsletter, and please don’t hesitate to share it with your friends or on social media using the buttons below.

Share

If you want to say ‘thanks’ for the newsletter, why not buy me a cup of tea?

Until next time,

Nick

Welcome

Welcome to issue 260 (111) — Happy Fifth Birthday. And this is not the fifth birthday of a favourite grandchild, but the fifth birthday of this newsletter.

Now, if you follow my weird issue numbering system, you will know that this is the 260th issue (hence, 260 weeks), and I have been retired for 111 weeks.

And 260 divided by 52 equals 5, so that is five years. Or you could view it as 4.98 years… Anyway, I cannot believe it has been five years since I started this newsletter.

The last five years

Over the last five years, the newsletter has changed. No big surprise there. Five years ago, I was thinking about retiring in three years, and the newsletter focused on my retirement plans and what retirement would be like. And for the first three years of the newsletter, that is pretty much how it went: I covered health issues, my thoughts on retiring, pensions, and finance. Looking back, I did spend quite a bit of time looking at different side-hustles I might set up in retirement to bring in a little extra money. But, overall, the newsletter was fairly consistent, and I like to think quite factual. My aims were simple:

• To help consolidate my thoughts on retiring

• To help others think about the retirement process

However, since I have retired, the newsletter has changed.

I now find that I spend less time writing about the mechanics of retiring and more about the consequences — and I don’t just mean financial ones. I have started writing more about health, how I spend my time, and how I’m trying to get the most from my retirement. Quite a big change. And this has surprised me. I had expected to continue along the ‘factual’ line, with tips and insights on managing finances, with the occasional story about side hustles and some comments on health.

For me, this change in the newsletter’s content is another indicator of how my thinking and views have changed as I have moved from working to retirement.

So, what has been the impact of the changes in content on the readership of the newsletter?

Some stats

I’m a scientist (see, in retirement, I still consider myself a scientist, and I haven’t, as I once feared, lost that identity), and I like numbers, stats and graphs. So here goes.

To date, excluding this week’s newsletter, I estimate I have written some 260,000 words, and all the back issues would take around 21 hours to read. These numbers are based on each newsletter being around 1,000 to 1,200 words, with a read time of five minutes. Those are big numbers. Well, I think they are.

Thirty-three people read my very first newsletter, and now it stands at 77. So, that means the back catalogue is picking up reads after the initial flurry in the first week after publication.

For the first four and a half years or so of the newsletter, the subscriber count and the number of reads it got didn’t grow very fast.

In fact, after four and a half years, I had a little over 300 free subscribers. And I was very happy with that number.

And then in November 2025, something strange happened. Something that I cannot explain.

By November 2025, I had been retired for 18 months, and the newsletter had been slowly changing. It had been moving away from how to retire towards being retired, and then ‘wham’ — I started picking up subscribers at an incredible rate.

In fact, if I look over the period since I retired, we get the following.

And if we look at new subscribers per month, we get:

For the first 20 months of my retirement, I averaged 10 new subscribers per month, and over the last 5 months, I have averaged 560 new subscribers per month. Why? How? I have no idea…. (Side note: the rate of increase has slowed in the last couple of weeks, but it’s still faster than before the sudden increase in November.)

Likewise, as you would expect (hope), views per month have followed a similar trend.

And the one thing I was worried about, that the sudden increase in subscriber numbers would cause a decrease in the open rate, hasn’t happened.

While I am delighted with all the new subscribers, it does raise a couple of questions :

• What did I do to get the sudden increase? And the answer is, I don’t know!

• And, what do I do next? Again, I have no idea.

If you have answers to either of these questions, please share them in the comments.

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The Future — what am I going to do?

OK, so what about the future? Where is this newsletter going next? Well — spoiler alert — I don’t really know. All I know is that I plan to keep it going.

My plans for the newsletter are, quite frankly, nonexistent. I don’t have an end goal as such. I do plan the newsletters, and I usually have subjects and titles lined up for the next month or two, sometimes more. However, I can say that I will be continuing with some of my recent themes, such as getting the most from retirement, ageing, physical and mental health, and, no doubt, death will be putting in an appearance. But there will also be new topics and areas that I will explore. What they will be, I don’t know. It all depends on what pops into my head when I’m out walking or in the shower. (For some reason, I seem to get my best thoughts on science and this newsletter in the shower. Most odd.)

One question I have been asked is whether I will be monetising this newsletter. Some of my early subscribers may remember I tried that, and it didn’t work; I couldn’t come up with a good way of monetising. What extras could I offer? What value? Hence, without something extra to offer, I have no plans to monetise. If you have any suggestions for extras I could offer or other ways to monetise the newsletter, please share them in the comments.

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And yes, I recently did something with Gumroad (the worksheets for my newsletter series on reflective practice), but those sheets were free, and some people were kind enough to leave a donation. Thank you. And then, of course, there is the buy me a cup of tea link, through which I occasionally get bought a tea. But as for monetising, I really don’t have any ideas or plans. (Just for full disclosure — the worksheets on Gumroad had a total of 11 downloads and £8.27 (about US$11) was donated, and since I have been retired, I have made £3.00 (about US$4) from this newsletter on Buy Me a Coffee.)

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Thanks

Finally, at the end of this fifth anniversary/birthday issue, I would like to thank all of you who have subscribed to the newsletter, and a big thanks to all of you who read it and take the time to leave comments. I may not reply to all comments, but I do read them. It’s great to think that I may not be shouting into the void.

And here’s to the next five years… I wonder what they will bring?

Next week

Next week in issue 261 (112), I look at the impact of ill health on old age… Yes, another cheery subject! And that is not a typo: I will be looking “on,” not “in.” There is, in my opinion, a difference.

Thanks (again)

Thanks for taking the time to read this newsletter, and please don’t hesitate to share it with your friends or on social media using the buttons below.

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Until next time,

Nick

PS: If you would like to contribute something to the newsletter — a story, advice, or anything else — please get in touch.

Welcome

Welcome to issue 259 (110) — when do we get old?

As I argued last week in issue 258 (109) — Does retirement equal old age — retirement does not equal old age. But that does raise the question — when do we get old? And, is old, an age thing?

When Do We Actually Get Old? (And Who Decides?)

We stop working, we slow down, and somehow we’ve crossed an invisible line into “being old.” Or have we?

I’m not convinced that line exists — at least not in the way some people imagine it.

Because if retirement does not equail old age… then when exactly do we get old?

The Day After Retirement

One of the strangest things I found about retiring is how little I changed overnight.

I woke the day after I retired expecting… something. A creakier knee, perhaps. A sudden fondness for beige trousers. An irresistible urge to complain about the price of tea.

But mostly, I felt the same.

However, I was aware that the world might see me differently. “Retired” is often treated as a polite synonym for “getting on a bit.” It’s a label that quietly nudges us into a different category — one that comes with expectations about how we should behave, think, look, and even feel.

And yet, internally, nothing dramatic had happened. I hadn’t become “old” in any meaningful sense. I’d just stopped going to work.

Is Old Age Just a Number?

We like to pretend it is — and it’s never our current age.

We throw around numbers like 60, 65, 70 — as if somewhere in that range a switch is flipped, and we officially become old. Governments like numbers because they’re tidy. Pension systems, healthcare planning, and statistics all depend on them.

But in real life, it’s much messier.

I have met 75-year-olds who are curious, energetic, and planning their next adventure… I have skied with an 80-year-old who out-skied me. And yet, I have met people in their 40s who look and feel worn out, are disengaged, and are done with trying new things.

If age alone defined “old,” that wouldn’t make much sense.

So perhaps getting old isn’t really about the number.

A Working Definition of “Old”

Let’s try something a bit more useful.

What if “old age” isn’t when you reach a certain birthday, but when certain patterns start to settle in?

For example:

• When the future starts to feel smaller than the past

• When curiosity is replaced by certainty (“I know how things are”)

• When change feels like a nuisance rather than an opportunity

• When the world quietly shrinks — fewer places, fewer people, fewer ideas

None of these is tied to a specific age. They can happen in our 30s, 60s, or even our 90s.

And importantly, they don’t have to happen at all.

The Subtle Slide (If It Happens)

If getting old isn’t a single moment, it might be more like a gradual drift.

Not dramatic. Not obvious.

We stop trying something new because it feels like effort. We put off that trip because “there’s always next year.” We rewatch the same programmes because they feel comfortable. Our routines harden a little.

None of this is inherently bad — we all need comfort and familiarity. But over time, the balance can tip. Life becomes narrower, quieter, and a bit more predictable.

And perhaps that’s when “old” starts to creep in — not as a number, but as a way of being.

Retirement: A Risk… or an Opportunity?

This is where retirement becomes interesting.

It can be the start of that narrowing process. Work disappears, structure fades, and it’s easy to slip into smaller routines.

But it can just as easily be the opposite.

When I retired, it was the first time in decades that I had control over my time. I could explore my interests, delve deeper into my hobbies, meet new people, and shape my days.

In other words, retirement can either accelerate “getting old”… or actually delay it.

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When Do We Get Old?

If I had to answer the question, I’d say this:

• We don’t get old when we retire.

• We don’t get old at 60, 70, or even 80.

We get old when we stop engaging with what’s ahead of us.

When the future becomes something we endure rather than something we participate in.

It means “old age” isn’t something that happens to us. It’s something that we can shape, nudge, and, to some extent, control.

A Slightly Reassuring Thought

All of this leads me to a comforting conclusion.

We don’t wake up one day and suddenly become old.

It’s not a trapdoor.

It’s more like a set of choices — small, almost invisible ones — that accumulate over time.

Stay curious. Keep a bit of uncertainty in our lives. Do the occasional thing that feels slightly inconvenient or new.

Not because we’re trying to “stay young” (which sounds exhausting), but because we’re continuing to stay engaged.

The Elephant in the room

All of the above is a “state of mind” and “attitude to life” and is all well and good, but there is the problem of ill health. Where does that fit in with when we get old?

And that will be the subject of a later newsletter.

Over to You…

If you’re retired and wondering whether this means you’ve entered old age, here’s a simple test:

• Are you still interested in what’s next?

If the answer is yes, then I’d argue you’re not old — not in any meaningful way.

You’ve just got more time to find out what happens next.

And that, if anything, feels like the opposite of old age.

What do you think? Do you consider yourself old? If you do, when did it happen? Please let me know in the comments.

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Next week

Next week, in issue 260 (111), I celebrate the fifth birthday of this newsletter. I can’t believe it has been five years since it started. It doesn’t seem possible.

Thanks

Thanks for taking the time to read this newsletter, and please don’t hesitate to share it with your friends or on social media using the buttons below.

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Until next time,

Nick

PS: If you would like to contribute something to the newsletter — a story, advice, or anything else — please get in touch.

Welcome

Welcome to issue 258 (109) — Does retirement equal old age?

It has been 109 weeks since I retired, and in that time, have I aged 109 weeks or have I aged more?

Does Retirement Equal Old Age?

There’s an assumption that slips into conversation the moment you say the word retired — “Retired? So, you are old!”

You see it in the slight tilt of the other person’s head. A look in their eye. The softening of their expectations. The way people recalibrate what they think your days look like. Slower. Smaller. And perhaps you are a little more… finished.

But is that true? Are my days slower and smaller? And am I nearly finished? Spoiler alert: NO!

In the beginning

When I first retired, I expected a gentle deceleration. Not a full stop, but certainly a lifting of the foot off the accelerator. I imagined longer mornings, fewer commitments, and easing into something quieter.

What I didn’t expect was how full everything would feel.

Not busy in the old sense — meetings, deadlines, or the endless low-level hum of work and email — but full in a different way. Time filled with choices rather than obligations. Days shaped by interest rather than necessity.

And that’s when the idea of “old age” started to feel a bit… misplaced.

Retirement and Old Age

We tend to bundle retirement and ageing together as if they are the same thing.
They’re not.

Retirement is a structural change. Old age is a biological one.

One is a decision (or at least a transition), the other is a process.

They might happen around the same time, but they don’t have to define each other. They are not linked.

In fact, for me, retirement has felt less like ageing and more like a return. A return to curiosity. A return to time that isn’t already spoken for.
A return to parts of myself that got quietly shelved somewhere in my 20s or 30s.

If anything, apart from some niggling joint pain from bits of me wearing out and slightly reduced energy levels, retiring has made me feel more youthful. That is, having the freedom to follow a thought all the way to the end. Or to abandon it halfway through, without consequence, makes me feel young again. That kind of flexibility doesn’t feel like decline. It feels like expansion.

The flip side

Of course, there’s another side to this.

There are reminders that time is moving on. My body is less forgiving. An injury now seems to take a lot longer to heal, and it seems easier to injure myself. Energy isn’t quite as elastic as it once was. There are moments — small but undeniable — when I notice that recovery takes longer, that sleep matters more, that I think a little more carefully before doing something I once did without a second thought.

But that isn’t the same as being “old”.

It’s just being… aware.

Of course, being more aware is not helped, or maybe it is, by having a career that was dominated by health and safety and risk assessments.

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Age is just a number

What seems to matter more is not the number attached to my age, but the relationship I have with my time.

Before retirement, my time was mostly allocated.
After retirement, time has become something I actively shape. I have control (mostly).

And that shift has changed how I experience life. My days are driven by interest, curiosity, and a sense of movement — even if that movement is a little slower and more controlled. I certainly don’t think I have entered some final chapter.

The psychological shift

There’s also been a subtle psychological shift.

When I was working, my identity was externally anchored. That is, my identity was defined by what I did, where I worked, and how I contributed — these things provided a structure not just for my day but also for my sense of self.

When these external anchors were removed, something interesting happened. I was left with the question: Who am I when I’m not required to be anything in particular?

And that question, when you think about it, doesn’t feel like old age. It feels like something much closer to freedom.

Perhaps the truth here is retirement doesn’t equal old age. It’s the way we view the relationship between retirement and old age.

I am retired; I am not old

If you step into retirement assuming it’s a winding down, a gradual retreat, a narrowing of life, then it may well become that. Not because it has to, but because expectations shape behaviour. This is something I firmly believe, and it is an assumption I am fighting against.

But if you approach retirement as a transition into a different kind of living — one where time is yours to direct — then it starts to look very different.

Does retirement equal old age?

Retirement can, if you let it, equal old age. But it doesn’t have to.

It can just as easily be a period of recalibration — a chance to redefine our pace of life, our purpose, and priorities. Retirement can be a stage in our lives where life is less about proving and more about experiencing.

And perhaps that’s the more interesting way to think about it.

Not as the beginning of the end.

But as the start of something that was always there… just waiting to be discovered.

And if nothing else, it’s a reminder that stepping away from work doesn’t automatically make you old.

It just allows you the space to decide what comes next.

Over to you

As ever, over to you. What do you think — does retirement equal old age? Please let me know in the comments.

Leave a comment

Next week

Next week in issue 259 (110), I look at when we get old… when does it happen?

Thanks

Thanks for taking the time to read this newsletter, and please don’t hesitate to share it with your friends or on social media using the buttons below.

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If you want to say ‘thanks’ for the newsletter, why not buy me a cup of tea?

Until next time,

Nick

PS: If you would like to contribute something to the newsletter — a story, advice, or anything else — please get in touch.

Welcome

Welcome to issue 257 (108) — future plans….

If you have read any of my other newsletters, you will know that I like to reflect and plan. And a question I like to focus on every so often is: what are my future plans? (This habit may have come out of a really annoying exercise we had to do at work every year called a PDR — a Personal Development Review or Professional Development Review. It was sold to us by HR as a way of helping us manage our careers. However, I suspect it was a mechanism put in place by HR to protect against accusations of poor management. I believe the idea came out of the States and has now been abandoned by numerous big companies, as it caused more problems than it solved.) Anyway, I was never sure what a PDR was supposed to do or achieve for me, apart from creating a ton of paperwork, wasting my time, and causing stress. And now it appears to have caused a habit that seems to have stuck.

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My Future Plans

So, what are my future retirement plans?

It’s a simple question.

And it was one I got asked a lot when I first retired. And, it’s still a question people casually ask. I think they expect me to have a neat answer waiting — one that involves timelines, a list, and perhaps a reassuring sense of certainty. I guess they are really asking: have you cracked retirement, and if you have, may I borrow your secret formula?

But the more time I spend in retirement, the less convincing my answer feels. Because if I’m honest, I don’t really have a fixed, defined plan. I am making up a lot of it as I go along.

What I seem to have instead is a direction of travel without a destination.

Not stopping, just changing the rules

When I first retired, I imagined I might “stop working.”

That hasn’t happened.

What has happened is something more subtle. I’ve kept working — but only on things I actually want to do.

I have my YouTube channels, newsletters, blogs, and the odd idea that turns into an online calculator or a guide… none of it feels like work in the old sense, but it keeps me busy. There are no deadlines unless I create them. No one is waiting for an update except, occasionally, me.

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The unexpected problem: too much to do

There’s a slightly awkward truth about retirement that I have mentioned before, and that most retirees comment on — we can end up busier than when we worked.

Often, this is not because we have to be busy, but because we can or want to be.

For me, every interesting idea, if I allow it, becomes a project. Every project expands. And before long, my week starts to look suspiciously overstructured again.

I’ve started to notice that creeping in.

So another quiet part of my future is probably this: Trying to do fewer things.

That is, I need to be more focused. I need to choose more carefully; I have to accept that I can’t do everything (even though I want to) and let some things go. And, for me, that isn’t easy.

Staying on the move (just more slowly)

One major part of my retirement plans is travel. It always has been.

Before I retired, I had plans to travel the world and explore Europe in a campervan. However, political events over the last ten years have put paid to those ideas.

My travel plans then switched to exploring the UK. Yes, it’s a small island, but it has a rich history and is larger than many people think. But the idea of exploring the UK by campervan didn’t sit well with me, mainly because of the traffic and the awful condition of some of our roads. So, I examined other options, and this is where narrowboats came in.

Now, if you are not familiar with narrowboats, think of them as a long (50 - 70 ft (15 - 20 m)), thin (6 ft, 10 in (2 m)) campervan, that can be used to explore over 2,000 miles (3,200 km) of interconnected waterways (rivers and canals) in the UK at a maximum speed of 4 mph (6.5 kph).

In essence, it’s a way to explore much of the UK at a slow pace in a floating home. And travelling this way is not just a way of getting from one place to another, but it is a way of shaping how time feels. And I have found that there’s something about moving slowly through a landscape that resists urgency. A great way to see and explore the UK, and it scratches my travel itch.

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Thinking… but not too much

I have touched on this before.

If there’s one theme that keeps coming up in my writing on retirement, it’s reflective practice. That is, the habit of looking back, assessing, and adjusting my retirement. I find the process useful as it helps me avoid drifting.

But there’s a point where reflection turns into overthinking, where every decision becomes something to analyse rather than something to try.

So perhaps the future involves a small shift: Keep the thinking and lose a bit of the analysis. Be more spontaneous.

Or put another way, less thinking, more doing.

If you would like help with reflective practise in retirement, I have a small series of newsletters on the subject:

• Reflective Practice in Retirement

• Out with the old and in with the new

• When reflection goes too far

And some free help sheets:

• Retirement Reflective Practice Help Sheet

• Are You Over-Reflecting Worksheet

Reflective practice is helping me get the most from my retirement.

Still wanting to be useful

One thing I haven’t lost is my desire to be useful.

Explaining things, simplifying things, and sharing what I’ve learned. These are all things that drove my career, and haven’t gone away in retirement, and I don’t think they ever will.

The difference now is that it happens on my terms.

No obligation — I don’t have to turn up at 9 am on a cold, wet winter Monday morning to deliver a lecture.

No expectation — I don’t have to hit high student satisfaction scores with my teaching.

I have a sense of usefulness in teaching, and it feels right.

So what’s the plan?

If I had to summarise it, it would sound something like this:

• Not a set of steps.

• Not a fixed destination.

Just a gradual movement toward:

• less pressure

• more control

• fewer but better things

• and a quiet shift from effort to ease

Which, now I think about it, might be as close to a retirement plan as I’m going to get.

Over to you

What are your retirement plans? Have you cracked the retirement code? Please let me know in the comments below. Thanks.

Leave a comment

Next week

Next week in issue 258 (109) — does retirement equal old age?

Thanks

Thanks for taking the time to read this newsletter, and please don’t hesitate to share it with your friends or on social media using the buttons below.

Share

If you want to say ‘thanks’ for the newsletter, why not buy me a cup of tea?

Until next time,

Nick

PS: If you would like to contribute something to the newsletter — a story, advice, or anything else — please get in touch.

Welcome

Welcome to issue 256 (107) — Did I reinvent myself when I retired?

Before I retired, the question of who or what I would become once I retired troubled me greatly. And, as I have said before, this was because I felt my “who am I?” was linked to what I did as a career — I was a scientist and an educator.

Even now, after two years of retirement, the WAS in “I was a scientist and an educator” jars, as I still think I am a scientist and an educator. But have I changed in retirement? Have I become something more? Or something less? Have I reinvented myself?

Who was I?

We all struggle with this. We wear many hats, some of which are linked to our work and careers, others to our personal lives. We are many things.

But if we are at a party and we meet someone, there is always the “so, what do you do?” question. But does the answer define us?

For years, my answer to the “so, what do you do?” was “university lecturer”. I liked my answer. I was proud of my answer. Many people who have asked me that question have been surprised by my answer.

My answer usually prompted a follow-up question: “What do you teach / research?” Again, an easy answer.

I felt well-defined by my answers to these questions.

But now, it’s not so easy.

How do I answer those questions now?

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Who should I be?

One little challenge we used to set students in their first lecture — “welcome to the course” — was to draw a picture of a scientist. Go on, have a go. Picture a drawing of a scientist. What do you see?

When we ran the exercise, well over 80% of the students (possibly even more) would draw an old man with a beard and glasses, often wearing a lab coat with patched sleeves, and holding a test tube. Is that what you pictured?

And no, they were not drawing me. The request to draw a scientist was delivered by a female colleague, who had introduced themselves as a scientist and explained their research interests. And yet, we still got lots of old bearded men. And if you think it was because it was a science course and 80% of the class were male, you would be wrong. The class was typically 50:50 male-to-female.

So, why am I telling you this?

Well, if you asked a non-retired person, below the age of 40, to draw a retiree, the chances are you would get something like the AI-generated image at the top of this newsletter. (Side note: I asked an AI to “Please produce a cartoon-like image of a typical make retiree.” And then, “Please draw the retiree at home in the lounge.”, and that is what it came up with. When I asked the AI to draw a cartoon of a bioscientist, it did draw a woman working in a lab.)

But who am I? I don’t recognise myself in the AI-generated image. (Well, the cup of tea is accurate as I’m often found with a cuppa in my hand.)

Who am I now?

In the last two newsletters — What are my biggest positives from being retired? — What are my biggest negatives or shocks in being retired? — I looked at the positive and negative changes in my retirement. Yes, things in my life have changed since I retired, but have they changed me?

The answer — yes and no!

In the yes column

The biggest change in who I am is due to the change in the pressures on my time.

I no longer work, so my time is my own. Or I would like to think it is — there are still external pressures on my time, but I mostly have control over how I respond to those pressures.

So, the change in my relationship with time has changed me. I don’t feel so rushed, and I am less stressed. I have time to consider things more deeply. I like to think I am more thoughtful. More considerate. Less impatient. More committed to projects, friends, and relationships. More “in the moment”.

I feel I have fundamentally changed as a person at that level.

(Although friends and family may disagree with some of the above statements.)

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In the no column

My big fear, as I said, would be that I would lose my identity as an educator and scientist. That is, as I no longer taught or did research, who would I be?

Turns out that I have managed to keep teaching and doing research in retirement.

My teaching is now online via YouTube. I make videos about my travels, and these often include a smattering of history and science. I got into making videos as we had to put all our teaching online at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. And I found I enjoyed making videos, so I have continued to make them.

For research, I may no longer play with test tubes in the lab, but I still do what I call “The Paper Chase”. (Does anyone remember the TV show of that name? Please let me know in the comments.) That is, a science news story piques my interest, and I deep dive into the science behind it. I chase the scientific papers that back up the story. Great fun. I’m still doing research and chasing down the facts. (Another good source for “paper chases” is being prescribed a new drug, getting a new diagnosis, or keeping up with the current research on my ailments.)

So, I’m retired, but I still feel I’m a scientist and an educator. Hence, no change there.

Have I changed?

As I said, yes and no. Overall, I feel the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

I like to think I have kept what is good and discarded what I thought was bad.

I am still me. But, I like to think, a better me. A new, improved me. (Again, friends and family may disagree with that statement.)

I love being retired. Without retirement, I would not have discovered who I am, and I feel that with each year of retirement, I discover more about myself and who I really am.

So, yes, I have changed and reinvented myself.

Over to you

How has retirement impacted you as a person? Do you feel you are a better person because you are retired? Please let me know in the comments.

Leave a comment

Next week

Next week, in issue 257 (108), I look at what’s next in my retirement.

Thanks

Thanks for taking the time to read this newsletter, and please don’t hesitate to share it with your friends or on social media using the buttons below.

Share

If you want to say ‘thanks’ for the newsletter, why not buy me a cup of tea?

Until next time,

Nick

PS: If you would like to contribute something to the newsletter — a story, advice, or anything else — please get in touch.

Welcome

Welcome to issue 255 (106) — my biggest shocks about being retired.

Last week on issue 254 (105) — What are my biggest positives from being retired? — I looked at what I had gained in being retired. And, in balance, for fairness, I must also look at my biggest shocks or negatives of being retired.

When I first retired, most of the conversations were about the positives.

Freedom.

Time.

No alarm clock.

And to be fair, those things are real.

But what I wasn’t quite prepared for were the small shocks — the subtle negatives that don’t make it into retirement brochures or celebratory leaving speeches.

None of these were catastrophic. But together, they form a quiet undercurrent that’s worth acknowledging.

1. The Unexpected Busyness

One of the great ironies of retirement is this:

You finally gain complete control of your time… and somehow end up with less of it.

And, in a way, it is a cliché, as nearly every retiree says it, and when you are not retired, you think it can’t be true? BUT, IT IS!

My days fill up, not with work, but with things. Small tasks expand. Appointments multiply. Projects creep in.

There’s no structure unless I create it — and without that structure, time becomes strangely slippery.

I sometimes find myself asking: “What exactly did I do today?”

And not always having a satisfying answer.

2. The Loss of Default Purpose

Work, for all its flaws, handed me a ready-made purpose.

I turned up. I did research. I taught students. I contributed. I was, in some sense, needed.

Retirement removed that framework overnight.

At first, I found this feeling liberating. But after a while, a question quietly appears: “What am I for now?”

As a result, I have tried to build a new purpose — but it takes effort, and more importantly, intention.

3. Social Life Doesn’t Replace Itself

I had never realised how much casual social contact work provides until it disappeared.

No more random corridor chats. No more quick conversations. No more shared grumbles. It’s odd the things you miss.

In retirement, I have found that my social interactions have become something I have to arrange. There are less opportunities for chance encounters.

Days can pass with surprisingly little human contact.

And that can feel… odd.

One solution I have found for this negative, which arose from COVID-19, is using chat apps and video calls to keep in touch with friends. It’s not the same as meeting for a chat, a walk, or a meal, but it does have its uses.

4. Weekends Lose Their Meaning

This is a small one, but surprisingly disorienting.

When every day is available, weekends stop feeling special.

There’s no Friday feeling: no Sunday evening lull or panic.

Time flattens.

At first, that sounds appealing. But it also removes the natural rhythm that once structured my week. However, I still have the annoying habit of seeing friends at the weekend and doing my weekly shop on a Saturday. Old habits are hard to break, plus not all my friends are retired and weekends is the only time we can catch up.

5. Decision Fatigue Creeps In

This has been a big one for me — Decision Fatigue.

With freedom comes choice.

With choice comes… quite a lot of thinking.

What should I do today?

What should I focus on this week?

Should I start something new? Continue something old?

Without constraints, I find that even simple decisions can feel oddly heavy.

It’s the paradox of retirement: Too much freedom can be surprisingly tiring.

There is also the paralysis of choice — I have too many things I want to do and places I want to go — so deciding what to do next becomes exhausting.

6. A Subtle Loss of Identity

For decades, the question “What do you do?” had a straightforward answer — “I am a scientist and an educator.”

Now, there isn’t such an easy answer.

I am no longer “a lecturer” or “a scientist”. I am now retired.

When I first retired, I liked to think I looked too young to be retired, so part of my identity was being “retired early”. But as I approach the standard retirement age in the UK, I don’t look like a “retired early”. It is another loss of identity.

Being retired is not a bad identity — but it’s a vague one. And the only way I can counter it is through my continued engagement with science and remaining curious about life.

But occasionally, I do miss the clarity of my old label.

7. Time Feels Different

This one is harder to describe, but is very real.

For me, time in retirement doesn’t move in the same way.

Without deadlines, milestones, and external pressures, I have found that if I am not careful, my weeks blur together. Months pass quickly — but, and I find this very odd, individual days can feel incredibly slow. It’s a strange compression and expansion happening simultaneously.

Very weird, and quite disconcerting.

8. The Quiet Awareness of Age

For me, work acted as a buffer against overthinking ageing, and I felt it kept me young.

If you have worked in education, you will know what I mean. Teaching means spending time with young people, which I felt kept me young. However, paradoxically, there were times when I was teaching that may students made me feel incredibly old. For example, when I started teaching, I could refer to recent events and be confident that my students would know what I was talking about. Over the years, I found this changed to me finishing a story with, “if you don’t know what I am referring to, ask your parents”, and finally, “ask your grandparents”. A clear indicator that time was slipping by.

I have found that retirement has removed the feeling that teaching was keeping me young, and as a result, I have become more aware of time — not in a dramatic way, but in a quieter, more reflective sense.

It’s less about fear and more about perspective.

But it’s definitely there.

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Closing

None of the above are a reason for me to regret retirement.

Far from it. I certainly don’t regret retiring and I still think I made the right decision at the right time.

The above are adjustments — and perhaps the biggest surprise is this:

Retirement isn’t just a schedule change.

It’s a change in structure, identity, and rhythm.

And like any major life transition, it comes with both gains and losses.

A Final Question For You

If you’re already retired:

What has surprised you the most? And, was it one of the above?

And if you’re heading towards retirement, which one do you think might catch you out?

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Next week

Next week in issue 256 (107), I ask, did I reinvent myself when I retired?

Thanks

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Until next time,

Nick

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